


The Locked Room

by Antosha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Liek Woah, Gen, Multi, POV Multiple, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory, Post-War, Stream of Consciousness, Threesome - F/F/M, flaming nargles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:34:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23844541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antosha/pseuds/Antosha
Summary: You never know what you're going to find in a locked room. (Harry/Ginny/Luna. Written pre-HBP.)
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Kudos: 12





	1. Prologue: Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> This series started out as gen—"Remembrance" and "Better Days," two unrelated fics about the cost of the war. Then I wrote "Camera Obscura" and all of that changed... By the time it was over I was a Harry/Ginny/Luna shipper. W00t!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry finds Luna when she needs to be found.

Harry knew where he would find her. Up the sere slopes of Stoatshead Hill he stumbled, his dress shoes sliding through the muddy, dead grass, to the spot where he had come across her twice before, right at the top of the hill.

There she was, sitting wrapped in her scuffed black robes, weaving a garland of dried flowers. "Rosemary," she said, "that's for remembrance..."

"Hey, Luna," said Harry.

"No," she said, shaking her tangled locks. "It's not hay. It's straw."

"It's... What?"

She held up a length of dried grass. "Straw," she said.

"Ah," said Harry, peering not at the brown grass, but at Luna's otherwhere eyes. He knelt next to her, moisture chilling his knee. "How are you?"

"Pansies, that's for thoughts," murmured Luna, pulling up a withered blue flower from her skirts and threading it into the garland. "Doesn't look much like Pansy Parkinson, though...."

"No," Harry agreed, and put his hand on her arm to still it. "Luna, how are you?"

More a startled woodland creature than a girl, she jerked her head back and looked at him. Then tears came to her large eyes, and with them, a touch of humanity. "He's gone," she said. Her face, usually so serene, crumbled, sorrow distorting it and her voice until they were almost unrecognizable.

"I'm so sorry," Harry sighed, and wrapped his arms around her.

She sobbed into his shoulder, and he could feel the wet blast of her breath gusting against his neck. After several minutes of unrestrained weeping, she howled into Harry's shoulder, "He said he'd never leave me!"

Harry felt as if his lungs were being ripped out. "I know he didn't want to."

Luna wept.

There are times when people cry and you feel uncomfortable because you know you're supposed to do something for them. This was not one of those times. Harry knew there was nothing he could do beyond what he was doing already, letting her tears and snot dampen his own robes and holding her as tightly and as gently as he could.

After some time--ten minutes? A half hour?--she began to subside, slowly losing steam. When she had calmed to merely gasping every few breaths, he kissed her on the top of the head--nothing romantic, just caring. Then he had tried to back up, but she had held him fiercely.

"What will I do?" she said into his collar. "Where will I go? I'm so alone."

"You've still got your home, Luna."

For the very first time since he had met her, hesitancy crept into the blonde girl's voice. "I... I don’t think I could go back there."

He nodded. He had avoided going back to Godric's Hollow all these years. He could certainly understand. "Ginny and Ron's mum was really worried about you when you left the service," he said, wiping her wet chin with his sleeve. "I know she'd love to have you stay at the Burrrow for as long as you want..."

Her eyes drifted north, to the horizon. She shrugged. "I don't know that Ronald and that curly haired girl would be terribly happy for me to be there."

Harry hugged her close again, and he could feel tears rumbling up inside her once more. "Trust me, they wouldn't mind at all. They'd want you there. Luna, listen to me. You saved their lives last year. Ron and Hermione are good people, and Ginny loves you like a sister. I know. We've talked about it. You will never be alone so long as one of us is alive."

Harry was ready for her to weep again, and would have understood if she had. But Luna didn't. She looked at him for a long moment, her pale blue eyes washed almost silver by her tears and the overcast winter sky. Then she looped the bedraggled garland around the crown of his head and stood. "No," she said, "I suppose I won't."

Together they walked down the hill towards Ottery St. Catchpole and the Burrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This piece was originally written in the same universe as "Release." It didn't make sense there, and I realized that it fit with the Locked Room series quite nicely; there's still a hint of the earlier idea, however. This was inspired simply by the idea of Luna-as-Ophelia.


	2. Better Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It wasn't until she returned to Hogwarts the next September that it really hit Ginny. She was alone." (Ginny and Luna's seventh year)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Angst. Gen. Implied character death (quite a lot).
> 
> This piece was originally written for rynne's shakespeare_challenge on LJ. I was given the prompt "True it is, we have seen better days," from As You Like It. The funny thing was, I'd played Duke Senior when I was 23 and had spoken those very lines...

> _"True it is, we have seen better days._ " William Shakespeare, _As You Like It_

It wasn't until she returned to Hogwarts the next September that it really hit Ginny. She was alone.  
  
After the first day of classes, rather than wander up to the library, or to the common room, she found herself meandering down the lawn to the beech tree that overlooked the lake. It had been a favorite spot for the lot of them to hang out, and as she sat down in the damp grass, she found herself searching for some lingering sign of their presence, of their laughter.  
  
None there. Only in her memory, which was layered with images like a forest floor littered with leaves.  
  
Hermione, Ron and Neville, all gone. Somehow, in this place, that was even more devastating than the loss of her own mother, a loss she knew she would be mourning for the rest of her life.  
  
Harry, still so strange and distant, huddled there in Grimmauld Place, looking up at her when they had both managed to stop crying and telling her, his green eyes flat and lifeless, "I don't know who I am anymore."  
  
Dumbledore and Hagrid, dead on the steps of the castle itself, right there.  
  
Death and destruction, blood and terror, and somehow it didn't feel as if they had won, even with Voldemort truly and finally defeated.  
  
She had spent her whole life wrapped up in her brothers' loves, their ambitions, their battles, their struggles, their friendships and their hates. She had rooted them on when they needed rooting and yelled at them when they needed yelling.  
  
But none of it seemed to matter any more.  
  
Hermione, Ron and Neville, all dead. And Mum. And Percy, the poor bastard. And Dumbledore, and Hagrid, and Lupin and Snape, and Mrs. Figg, and Kingsely Shacklebolt, Tonks, and Cho, and Dean, and Susan Bones, and Theo Nott, and Ernie MacMillan, and the Patil sisters, and the Creevey brothers, and so many others. All dead. And Harry as good as.  
  
And all of the love and joy that had warmed her way through the difficulties of the past six years like some sort of magical furnace was melted away, less substantial than the mist that was dampening the grass, and swirling through the tree limbs.  
  
She felt rather than heard someone settling down behind her, smelt a mixture of vanilla and bubotuber puss. "Hi, Luna," she said. "Just come from Herbology?"  
  
"Yes," said Luna, airily. "I tried to show Professor Sprout a different way of lancing bubotubers. Daddy ran an article in _The Quibbler_."  
  
Mirthlessly, Ginny laughed, just because it seemed called for. "What did Professor Sprout think of that?"  
  
"Oh, I never presume to know what people are thinking. But she didn't look particularly happy."  
  
"I bet not," Ginny sighed.  
  
"For that matter," said Luna, "neither do you."  
  
"What?" Ginny said. Turning around, she saw Luna's eyes gazing at her in that steadying, infuriating, knowing way that she had. "Oh, all right, yes, I'm not terribly happy."  
  
"Ghosts?" Luna asked, who knew something about ghosts.  
  
"Yes, I suppose. But it's more, you know, the _absence_ that's eating at me just now. I thought coming back here would be coming back to all the laughter and the _purpose..._ But it's all just empty, you know?"  
  
"I think so," said Luna.  
  
"It's like... I know you always saw the Thestrals, but when I finally saw them last year the whole place seemed... _less_ magical. More just a place. And now, to come back, when there's so much missing... It feels so..."  
  
"Empty," Luna finished, and handed Ginny a tattered handkerchief.  
  
"I mean, what's the point? Take classes, pass tests. Why? What does it matter? Go on dates to Hogsmeade? Learn silly spells to turn yourself into a bat or make the lake turn purple? And so many people are just _gone_ and it just all doesn't seem to matter at all, what happens, what I do. I mean, what the hell is the point of it all?"  
  
Luna took back the handkerchief, limp and dry in Ginny's hand, and dabbed gently at Ginny's damp cheeks. "Oh, there is a point. I don't know that we ever get to see it, but there is a point."  
  
Ginny snorted. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"  
  
"When _my_ mother died, I spent a lot of time thinking about the same sorts of things. Daddy, of course, wasn't much help, because he was just as devastated as I was. The two of us would barely remember to eat. And what I came to realize was that there is more than just what you can see and feel and hear at work. That there is some sort of gigantic game being played out, and we're only aware of part of it--that it goes on outside the realm of our senses and beyond our sense of time and place." When Ginny scowled at her, Luna went on. "You've been in the Department of Mysteries, Ginny. You know that what they try to study there, all of it, is finally unknowable. Time, the future, space, the mind. Death. Love. These are dimensions that we can guess are there, but there's no way to say, 'Ah, this is how this works, this is what this means.'"  
  
"You're spouting rubbish, Luna."  
  
"Perhaps. But I've been thinking about this for a long time." She looked out towards the lake, her silver-blue eyes mirroring the overcast sky perfectly. "My mother used to say that the meaning of life was whatever you make of it. I never knew what she meant by that. But I think it had something to do with playing the game fully."  
  
Ginny rubbed her temples. She hated it when Luna got philosophical like this, because it left Ginny feeling as if she were looking at the world through a wool muffler. "It's not a _game_ , Luna."  
  
"But it is, Ginevra. You love Quidditch, don't you?"  
  
Ginny shrugged bleakly. The fierce ecstasy on Ron's face as he made the final save last year, just as Harry was catching the Snitch. He would be dead less than two hours later.  
  
Luna stared out at the lake for a moment and then went on. "I never really cared much for it. It always seemed rather pointless, you know, a bunch of people flying around, throwing things and catching things. But then, the year that you and Ronald were first on the Gryffindor team, it all suddenly made sense to me. _You have to pick a side_ for it to be any fun at all. You have to pick a side and pretend that it really matters: then it's quite exciting."  
  
"Not most of the matches we played _that_ year," groaned Ginny.  
  
Her friend simply continued. "It occurred to me that most things are that way. If you play the game fully, then there's pleasure in the doing of it. Of course," Luna said, resting a hand lightly on Ginny's leg, "then you also get the pain of loss. But it all matters."  
  
Luna's strange eyes filled with tears. "You okay, Luna?" Ginny asked, startled.  
  
"Do you remember when my mother died?"  
  
Ginny nodded her head.  
  
"You came over to play at my house every day for months. And I couldn't play. So you would play in my room, giving my dolls tea parties, brushing their hair, brushing _my_ hair... And I would just sit there and watch you. And listen to you. For months. And the stories that you were spinning began to whirl around in my brain, and all of a sudden, I found myself _in_ the games, playing along with you... Ginevra, it was the nicest thing anyone ever has ever done for me. Even nicer than the time Neville gave me that Snorkack horn and kissed me under the mistletoe."  
  
Ginny didn't have any idea what to say, so she looked down at Luna's hand splayed across her leg.  
  
"I'd like to try to return the favor," said her friend. "Come on, let me show you something," and she pulled Ginny to her feet and towards the nearby forest.  
  
"Uh, Luna, what... Where are we going?"  
  
"You'll see," Luna said airily as they passed into the first trees in the Forbidden Forest.  
  
Ginny looked around nervously--she'd been here before, but never without Hermione, her brother, and Harry. "I don't know if this is a good idea, Luna, there's a reason this is called..."  
  
"Last June," Luna said, an uncharacteristic look of determination on her face as she pulled Ginny along a narrow track, "you fought off two Acromantula, three Death Eaters and a Troll. At this time of day, I don't think there's anything in these woods that you need to be afraid of, apart from the Centaurs. And the Centaurs still don't come to this part of the forest often."  
  
Looking around, Ginny was vaguely aware that they were, in fact, headed into the part of the forest where Hagrid's brother Grawp had lived for two years. Several of the trees seemed to have had their tops ripped off. "Can't blame the Centaurs," Ginny muttered, "Poor old Grawp didn't like them very much..."  
  
"No," Luna agreed, and then she held up her hand. They had come to a clearing. "Ah! Ginevra, I'd like you to close your eyes for a little bit."  
  
Ginny looked her friend dubiously; the determined expression was still lodged on Luna's face, however, so Ginny merely shrugged. "I wish I'd never told you my full name. No one ever uses it."  
  
"I do," said Luna, infuriatingly--which made Ginny want to laugh, thinking how angry Hermione used to get at Luna. Which made Ginny want to cry. Luna put her spindly fingers over Ginny's eyes, and Ginny dutifully closed the lids. "I think your name is lovely." Luna now lowered her hand and took Ginny's. "I'm going to lead you now. Don't open your eyes."  
  
"But..." Ginny began.  
  
Luna simply walked her forward. They were in the clearing, Ginny knew, feeling the sunlight on her face and the thick grass pulling at her feet.  
  
"Here," Luna said. "Kneel down."  
  
Still dubious, eyes still shut, Ginny did as she had been told.  
  
After a minute of silence, Luna spoke. "Magic isn't just funny words, and squiggles on parchment and disgusting brews and such. Magic is part of what we _are_ , part of everything--not just the creatures and the wizarding folk, though we have the sensitivity and the power to use it, but everybody, everything. The magic is spread across the face of the earth, but nobody sees it."  
  
Ginny felt a warm weight lay across her thighs--Luna's arm, she assumed.  
  
"You should open your eyes now, Ginevra," Luna said, very softly.  
  
Perplexed, Ginny did so. A unicorn, impossibly white, was kneeling beside her, its golden horn laid across Ginny's lap. A warmth flowed into Ginny, filling an emptiness she had only begun to perceive. "Oh!"  
  
Luna's hand rested lightly on Ginny's shoulder, then began to run gently though Ginny's hair.  
  
Not so alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: When I wrote this, I didn't intend for there to be any romantic angle at all, but it's here, very subtly, in spite of myself. Who knew it was going to launch a Harry/Ginny/Luna series? Not me!
> 
> Still, this is a gen piece, and I think the best that I've written.


	3. Camera Obscura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the last battle has been won, Harry is locked in the gloom of Grimmauld Place and his own grief. Ginny convinces Luna that they should go and cheer the boy up... Easier said than done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to aberforths_rug for the beta.
> 
> Warnings: Threesome. Pansexuality. Angst. Implied threesome sex.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time: Apparate down from Hogsmeade for the afternoon with Luna, and cheer Harry up.  
  
Harry's last letter had been so terse, so devoid of _Harry_ , that it had taken Ginny's breath away. When it had concluded, _It's lovely that you're feeling happier_ , she had thought, right, you bugger, we've got to do something about you, too.  
  
So she had decided to pop down to London on the first Hogsmeade Saturday. Nobody would miss them, and they could be back in time to clear the new Caretaker Mrs. Crotchett's basilisk glare before curfew.  
  
She had raided the last of the great Weasley store of alcohol behind the clock in the common room--one bottle of Finnegans Firewhiskey ("You'll drop more than your apostrophes!") and another of some rum that Bill's pen-pal in Brazil had sent him a decade or so earlier that was supposed to turn your hair purple. That should be entertaining, she thought.  
  
When Luna met up with her in the entry hall, it occurred to Ginny for the first time to wonder what had possessed her to ask her friend along. True, Luna had never made Harry as furious as she had Hermione or as nervous as she had made Ron....  
  
Thinking of Hermione and Ron suddenly left Ginny feeling as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over her, and, unbidden, images of the two of them, crumpled together on the floor of the Death Room, had led to images of her mother, dead in the Burrow, of Percy, dead in the lobby of the Ministry, of Dumbledore and Hagrid on the steps she was about to walk down, of Dean at Christmas, and Cho Chang, and Susan Bones, and the Patils and...  
  
The touch of Luna's hand on her shoulder broke the spell. Ginny realized that everyone in the line behind her was staring at her, as were Mrs. Crotchett and the headmistress. Professor McGonagall placed a dry hand on Ginny's other shoulder. "Are you all right, Miss Weasley?"  
  
Almost in spite of herself, Ginny nodded. "Flashback," she murmured, and saw those behind her nod too. Everyone knew. Everyone thought they understood.  
  
The headmistress gave her the thinnest of smiles, and waved Ginny and Luna through the huge doors.  
  
The two of them were the last members of the original DA left at the school. The Creeveys, of course, were also dead. Everyone knew what Ginny and Luna had done and what they had seen. And, of course, everyone in school had suffered their own losses.  
  
As they walked down the road to the school gates, breaths barely ghosting the crisp October air, Ginny considered her friend, who seemed to be reciting "The Walrus and the Carpenter" under her breath. Her bulging eyes scanned the world with an equanimity that Ginny could only envy and wonder at.  
  
In front of them, a group of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor third years were laughing, bursting with excitement at making their first trek down to the village, talking about which shop they would go to first and whether they'd really be able to buy butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks. It stunned Ginny to see them acting so _normally_ , when all she could think of as they walked through the gate was Hagrid riding Norbert against a squad of his own Giant kin. The top of the gate was still scorched black.  
  
As the younger students sprinted down towards Hogsmeade, Ginny lead Luna off in the other direction, down towards the railroad tracks. "Come on," she said, trying desperately to keep the sense of fun and adventure with which she had meant to infect Grimmauld Place. "Let's Apparate from over here. We're outside of the grounds."  
  
Without showing much concern one way or another, Luna nodded and the two of them Disapparated with a _pop_.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Of course, they still had to enter the house by the battered front door. Luna reached out and rapped with the knocker before Ginny could stop her, but instead of the harangue from Mrs. Black that she had instinctively expected, Ginny was greeted by a quiet squeak as the door opened.  
  
An enormous pair of green eyes looked up from waist level. "Miss Ginny, Miss Luna! Dobby is glad to see you two!" The house elf was dressed in what would seem to be an entire wardrobe of socks--argyle, neon, woven, knitted. They were festooned about his body like fetishes.  
  
He led them into the front hall.  
  
Sirius's mother was finally gone. In her place was a portrait of Harry's parents that Dean had painted, just before he died. They waved down at Ginny. She had watched her boyfriend painting this as a Christmas gift for their friend. Ginny had filched the photo from Harry's album, so they knew her well. Dean hadn't even been able to sign it. But at least he had cast the charms that brought the figures to life.  
  
That painting was flanked by portraits of Remus Lupin, and, of course, Sirius Black. They too gazed down at the girls familiarly and fondly.  
  
In Sirius's lap lay a tattered shape. A rat missing one claw on its right paw. Oh, Merlin.  
  
"He died to save me," said a colorless voice from behind Ginny's ear. "It was the least I could think to do to honor him. I think Sirius would have approved." The Sirius in the painting raised an eyebrow, but petted Scabbers nonetheless.  
  
Ginny spun to find Harry peering up at the paintings from the bottom of the stairs. "Harry!" she said, but the excitement that had leapt to her throat died there as she saw his palor, the dark circles under his eyes. The redness that showed that--even now--he had been crying. "Oh, Harry."  
  
Harry's eyes bathed her in their green sea flood for a moment, then flicked to Luna. Luna, however, was looking abstractedly at Ginny.  
  
"So," Harry said, finally, "what brings the two of you down to this house of mirth?"  
  
"We’ve come to cheer you up," Ginny said, as brightly as she could manage. She felt as if she were playing the _role_ of Ginny Weasley, bright and plucky and always cheery. Cheery wasn't what she felt at all, in that moment.  
  
At least Luna gave a vague smile of support.  
  
"Ah," Harry sighed, his face impassive, his black robes without a tatter, stain or ornament. "Bit of a large order, that."  
  
"What?" Ginny said in what she hoped sounded like mock indignation. She pulled the bottles from her book bag. "A couple of school girls show up on your doorstep, in uniforms and all, bearing booze, and that doesn't even merit a _little_ smile, Mr. Potter?"  
  
"I've only been out of school a few months myself," Harry muttered, though the corners of his mouth did lift almost imperceptibly. The _idea_ of a smile, but it would serve. "What did you have in mind? Truth or Dare? Spin the Wand?"  
  
" _Now_ you're kidding," Ginny teased, relieved that he was at least playing along. "I don't think we had any idea what we were going to do once we got here, but..." She looked to Luna again, but her friend was now staring off into the ether, that maddening Luna smile on her thin lips.  
  
"But what?" Harry asked.  
  
"But... It's been horrible being back at school, honestly. They've scrubbed away all of the blood, but I know where every spot was..." The two of them were staring at her now, both level-gazed, silver eyes and green. "And I would have gone mad these last two months if I hadn't had Luna there. She's kept me sane. And I thought... That is, we... I thought, and Luna agreed, that maybe we could do some of the same for you...." Her little speech petered out under Harry's empty look. Not so plucky, not so cheery. A little bleak, really, but the truth.  
  
Harry nodded, looking from Ginny's face to Luna's. "Have the two of you had lunch?"  
  
They both shook their heads.  
  
"Oi, Dobby!" Harry called out.  
  
"Yes, Harry Potter, sir? What can Dobby do, sir?"  
  
"Would you mind bringing something to eat in to the dining room?" Harry asked.  
  
"Would Dobby mind, sir? Oh, it would be Dobby's greatest pleasure sir!" The house elf seemed to be vibrating with excitement.  
  
Ginny was feeling a bit alarmed. "Nothing too fancy, Dobby, please, just some sandwiches or something...."  
  
Dobby looked up at her as if she'd slapped him. Funny, she thought--his eyes are almost the exact shade of.... Then the elf smiled broadly. "Miss Wheezey will have her little joke, miss. Dobby will have luncheon out immediately, miss!" With that, he disappeared into yet another portal full of ghosts: the door to the Grimmauld Place kitchens.  
  
"Well," Harry said, the uncertain attempt at a smile still playing on his lips, "I can't have two lovely young ladies drinking..." He peered through his glasses at one of the bottles hanging limp in Ginny's grip. " _Rum Cabelo Roxo_ on an empty stomach. Not terribly hospitable, to begin with, and your dad would kill me, besides, Ginny."  
  
Before Ginny's ire had a chance to peak, Harry meandered into the dining room. "When Dobby says 'immediately,'" Harry said, "he means it. Look--he's already served out the first course...."  
  
Ginny and Luna trailed behind their friend and Ginny was stunned. The last time she had been here, in mid-August, this room had still born the traces of having served as the Order's operations center--shreds of parchment, torn maps on the wall. Dobby had just started working for Harry then, and the transformation was astonishing. The chandelier glittered, a painting of Albus Dumbledore smiling down from the wall, and the rosewood-inlaid table was polished to a blinding sheen, sporting three places laid with silver and crystal and china. Three salads that looked so fresh and crisp that Ginny almost couldn't bear the thought of disturbing the plates. Two goblets filled blood-red. One clear.  
  
"Wow," Ginny said. "Beats the Three Broomsticks."  
  
"Miss Wheezy is too kind to say so," Dobby's muffled voice called out from the other side of the door that led to the kitchen.  
  
Harry stood behind the tall chair at the head of the table and indicated that his guests should sit. Slightly awed, Ginny did so, stowing her bag and the alcohol beneath the table. Luna seemed to notice the table only then; she too sat.  
  
Again, Harry seemed to consider smiling before gravity sucked him back down. Ginny's insides twisted as she watch that happen. _Damn you, Potter..._ He picked up his goblet, the clear one. "I hope you like the wine," Harry said. "The cellars here are still very well stocked. Now, if you don't mind, a toast: To friends, and to the joy they bring."  
  
The twist worked its way up into Ginny's throat as she and Luna lifted their glasses to answer the toast. The wine was dark-flavored, rich and almost chocolaty. "Mmmm. Harry that's really... I mean, what do you say? It's really yummy," Ginny said, feeling it spread through her. "Thought you didn't want us drunk on an empty stomach? And what are you drinking, Harry?"  
  
The little warmth that had shown in Harry's face drained away. "Water. I... I really can't be drinking right now. Dobby's worried that I sometimes get pretty bad..."  
  
"Oh." Ginny wanted to take the two bottles at her feet and throw them out of the window. "I, uh... I guess that makes sense. That was stupid of me."  
  
Harry shook his head, and began to eat, not looking up.  
  
Ginny looked down at her own plate, at the glistening china and the perfect arrangement of bright, crisp greens. "Merlin," she muttered. "I almost don't want to mess it up. Poor Mum would have loved to be served like this. She never felt as if her meals were..." Ginny stopped before her throat seized up entirely.  
  
Luna looked up, tilted her head to one side, and spoke her first intelligible words since leaving the school. "The meals at your parents' home were the most wonderful I've ever had."  
  
Harry peered at Luna for a moment, then nodded solemnly to Ginny. "All those years of eating with you and your family, Ginny, I never once failed to get up from the table feeling better than when I'd sat down."  
  
Ginny covered her face with her napkin, then took a breath and lowered it. "Even the time I dumped my oatmeal in your lap, that first summer?"  
  
That merited something approaching a true smile, even from Harry. "Even then."  
  
Now she began to eat, looking for any distraction from the crushing sadness that every conversation with this man, every memory of this place seemed to visit on her.  
  
"I remember having dinner at the Burrow right after my mother died," Luna murmured. "Your mum made cheese soup, which I thought sounded rather odd. But it _tasted_ happy. Or maybe it was all of you laughing and smiling...."  
  
"That was the night that Fred and George..." Ginny gave a weak, snorting giggle, "tried to convince Ron that 'fork' was pronounced 'fuck.'"  
  
And they all laughed, even as they all thought of the fact that Ron was not there.  
  
They passed the rest of the meal in companionable, sad silence.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
As Dobby brought out the cheese course, even Luna groaned, standing up to examine the sleeves on the Dumbledore portrait's robes.  
  
"Dobby, you've outdone yourself," Harry said. Turning to the girls, he sigh, "Poor Dobby doesn't get much of a chance to dust off his skills. Haven't had many visitors..."  
  
"Not true, Harry Potter, sir!" said the house elf, pouring out tiny glasses of port that Ginny thought tasted like sweet liquid smoke. "Last week we had Miss Abbott and Miss Turpin and Miss Midgen. The week before that it was Miss Fawcett and Miss Parkinson...."  
  
"Pansy Parkinson?" Ginny said, even as dread settled heavy in her stomach. "You've been seeing _Pansy Parkinson_."  
  
"No!" barked Harry. "It's nothing like that! It's... nothing like _you_ two. Not one of them came here as a friend. None of them stayed for a meal, which was, Dobby, you meddling elf, the point that I was trying to make. They were all here to steal a march on the most eligible bachelor since old Gilderoy blasted his memory out on the way to the Chamber of Secrets. Pansy came intending to seduce me, I guess--which made her stomach turn as much as it did mine, I'm sure--but she was much more passionate about the idea of our 'two great family lines merging' than she ever was about _me_." He glowered down into his water.  
  
 _Damn you, Potter_ , Ginny found herself thinking again. How was it that he could humiliate her and inspire her sympathy, both at the same time?  
  
"Come on," Harry said, "Let's go up to the sitting room. I've got another painting I want to show you." He turned to Dobby. "Thanks, Dobby. That was wonderful."  
  
The girls murmured in agreement.  
  
The elf wrung at his belt of socks, large tears forming along his long nose. "Harry Potter, sir, misses, you is too kind to Dobby... Perhaps, Harry Potter, sir, Dobby should not take his...."  
  
"No, Dobby, come on, we go through this every week. It's your evening off. Draw your pay and leave. If I see you before tomorrow morning--or if you spend any of your damned pay on _me_ \--I'll dock your salary."  
  
"Harry Potter will have his little joke, sir. Dobby will try to... enjoy himself this afternoon and evening, sir. Once Dobby is finished cleaning up from this meal, sir."  
  
Ginny moved forward. "Let us help you clear, at least, Dobby."  
  
Suddenly the elf looked deeply insulted. "Oh, _no,_ miss. Do not take from Dobby the honor of his service, miss."  
  
"I, uh, wouldn't dream of it," said the nonplussed Ginny.  
  
As they followed Harry's dark form up the stairs to the sitting room, Ginny watched the paintings in the front hall following her with their eyes, smiling.  
  
Luna's hand tucked itself into Ginny's elbow as they walked behind Harry into the old sitting room. He led them down to the far end, where once the Black family tree had taken up most of the wall. Now there was an enormous canvas, with nearly thirty very familiar figures milling around.  
  
"It's the DA, that first day at the Hog's Head," Ginny gasped.  
  
Harry nodded. "It's not exactly the same, of course. Look."  
  
Ginny and Luna walked up to the painting. They were seated around the big table. In the background lurked Aberforth Dumbledore, Mundungus Fletcher in his witch's hat and veil, Tonks in her bandages. There, around the pushed-together tables, were Michael Corner, Dean, Cho Chang and Zacharias Smith, Susan Bones, Ernie MacMillan and Justin Finch-Fletchley. In the front row were Neville, Hermione in her favorite dark blue dress, Ron in a Cannons shirt, and then Harry, Luna and Ginny themselves, all in school robes.  
  
Ginny's emotions were bubbling again, looking at all of these people she had fought with and cared for. She touched a finger to Cho's smiling face and Cho giggled as if tickled; she was dressed in sapphire silk, which Ginny was fairly certain she hadn't been wearing that day.  
  
" _We're_ wearing black," Luna said, airily.  
  
Ginny looked again, and saw what Luna meant: the dead members of Dumbledore's Army, nearly half of the total number, were dressed in bright colors. They were looking happy, grinning and sipping at butterbeer. Harry, Ginny, Luna and the other members who had survived were glummer, and they were all dressed somberly in their school robes. Even Fred and George looked as if they would really like to hear a joke.  
  
Ginny realized she was crying only when she felt two sets of hands on her shoulders.  
  
"I'm sorry," Harry said. "I thought you would enjoy it. I didn't mean for you to..."  
  
Ginny shook her head and smiled, or tried to. "No, it's all right. It's just... I think this is just right. The lot of us that are left, everywhere we look is a reminder, isn't it? Even a celebration is an act of mourning..."  
  
Harry backed away, his face in a grimace. "No, I'm so sorry. Everything I touch right now turns to ash. You came here to cheer me up, and all I can manage to do is make you cry."  
  
Later, Ginny would realize that her response had been building all day, all month, all year--ever since the week before Christmas the previous year, when Death Eaters had killed Dean and his family, and they had all been devastated, Ginny especially, and Harry had been furious with himself, certain that Dean's family would never have been targeted if it hadn't been for the DA, for him. Nonetheless, standing there in the Grimmauld Place sitting room, the reaction caught her--and her friends--utterly by surprise.  
  
"Don't you dare! Don't you _DARE_ take away my right to call my grief my own, Harry Potter! You bloody, arrogant, self-obsessed, beautiful bloody _wanker_. We came here today because we love you, you stupid plod! We think you're the bee's bloody knees, and without you we'd all be bloody _dead_. But that doesn't mean that my being sad is _your_ bloody fault. You lost some people, did you? Two best friends, a girlfriend, a former girlfriend, a couple of parents, a bunch of mates? Fine, you arrogant bloody toerag, I'll see that and raise you. I lost _my_ best friend--aside from the two of you--not to mention two brothers, a mother, two boyfriends and more friends than I think I can stand on any given day, including, as near as I can tell, _you_ , and what did _I_ do this morning, instead of going with Luna down to Zonko's and the Three Broomsticks and flirting with the poor dregs of the seventh-years, who are all scared of the two of us anyway because we fought in the bloody Battles of the Department of Mysteries? What did I do? I came down _here_ to try to fucking cheer _you_ up! I'm bloody crying because _I'm_ bloody sad." And, annoyingly, she found that she was, indeed, crying. "I'm here because I..."  
  
Eyes wide and face burnished with shame, Harry stepped towards her. "Ginny, I'm so sorr..."  
  
She turned away, intending to walk out the door, but instead ran directly into Luna. Who wrapped her spindly arms around Ginny and kissed her gently on the lips.  
  
It is not too much to say that Ginny was already in shock, her own anger singing through her nerves, and so perhaps, when she looked back on it later, Ginny thought it wise not to be too surprised that she accepted the kiss, felt its warmth stilling her, and tentatively returned it.  
  
It was when Luna stepped back that a mixture of astonishment, desire and shame thrilled through her. She looked instinctively to Harry and saw her own feelings spelled out in his expression.  
  
He looked as if someone had kissed and slapped him both at the same time. "I can go..."  
  
Ginny felt the urge to howl at him some more, to tell him that he was an idiot, that if he walked out of the door that she would kill him, but Luna was quicker. "I just thought I'd show you what love looks like again," she said.  
  
For the first time in months, something other than images of death and loss rendered Ginny speechless. The butterfly heat of Luna's kiss had stolen from her all power of thought. Again she turned to Harry and saw color coming to his cheeks for the first time since the previous spring. He was also speechless.  
  
Luna stepped forward and kissed him too, and he gave a moan of longing as their mouths came together that melted Ginny utterly--it could have been sounded from the depths of her own soul.  
  
Ginny stood there, dumb, blinking, until Luna stepped back from Harry, leaving him gasping. The blonde girl blinked then too, and twined her arms in front of her. "I sort of lost a boyfriend last June too," she said, very evenly. "Sort of lost two, though Neville only kissed me once and Ronald never did seem to be listening when I told him how I felt. But there are two people in this room that I love very much."  
  
Ginny and Harry moved towards her.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Night had fallen, and they were arranged, spent, on Harry's enormous bed. A triangle: Ginny's head on Harry's stomach, Harry's on Luna's, Luna's tangled hair tickling Ginny's belly and the insides of her thighs.  
  
Ginny gasped, "Oh, damn."  
  
Harry reached down and stroked her forehead. "What's the matter?"  
  
"We've missed curfew. Mrs. Crotchett'll be out for blood." In spite of her anxiety, she let her head melt under his caress, back down on to the flat plane of his stomach.  
  
Harry gave her a smile that--even after all of these hours of shared pleasure--made her whole body blossom. It was that wicked, happy Harry smile that Ginny thought she had lost forever. "I, uh..."  
  
"In for a sigh, in for a sickle... " Luna said.  
  
"Well, don't be angry--I didn't plan on _this_ happening--but when I saw the two of you on the front step, I sent Fawkes with letters to Professor McGonagall and Ginny's dad, saying that I'd invited the two of you to be my guests here tonight."  
  
"Don't be angry?" Ginny laughed. "You bloody pervert! You lured two innocent girls here with evil intent!"  
  
Luna hummed gently, and Ginny laughed again.  
  
"You know it wasn't like that," Harry said, and he was smiling still. "I just... The two of you make me _happy_ , and no one else does that. Besides," he said, running his fingers down Ginny's neck and over one breast, "I'll buy Luna as innocent, but you? Based on the working knowledge you've showed us so far..."  
  
"You calling me a scarlet woman, Potter?" asked Ginny, teasing only a little.  
  
"Never," he said, running his fingers lazily over the other breast and along her ribs.  
  
"It's only sex, Harry."  
  
"True," he said, quietly. "But it's very, very nice. And I do..." His face clouded as it had not since that early that afternoon. "Can I tell you what happened to Tom?"  
  
"Of course you can," said Luna. "Would you like to?"  
  
In spite of the fire roaring nearby, Ginny shivered.  
  
He nodded. "Yeah. I would. I've never told anyone because... I don't know." He shook his head. "You know I'd tried to use the Killing Curse on him twice, once in the Death Room, after he killed your brother and Hermione, and then again in the Time Room. And both times it failed, because I just... couldn't do it. You know?"  
  
"Yes, Harry, we remember," Luna said.  
  
"It scared me that you'd tried, and scared me that you'd failed," murmured Ginny. She found herself holding on to Luna's head as if it were some fluffy stuffed animal, caressing it for her own comfort.  
  
"Me too." Harry watched her fingers playing in Luna's hair. "When he tricked me into opening the locked room, I thought I had let him win, and he did too. He was laughing like a maniac when he followed me in there...."  
  
"Yes?" Ginny asked. So far as she knew, Harry had never told anyone what had happened in that room. All anyone knew was that Voldemort and Harry had gone into the locked room together, and that Harry had emerged with the body that Ginny recognized so well: pale, black-haired Tom Riddle.  
  
"As soon as the door shut behind us, he stopped laughing. The feeling in that room.... It wasn't _happy_ or _light_. It was... awesome. That's the only word. It was as if someone had shown me the entire universe, all at once, every atom. The threads connecting every soul to every other. It was the most beautiful and most terrible feeling I'd ever experienced. And... I had a vision."  
  
Ginny could see the flickering light of the fire reflected in his eyes. "It was like when I looked in the Mirror of Erised my first year. Then I'd seen my family--the family I didn't know I had. This time it was... It was my parents, yeah, but also Hagrid and Dumbledore, Ron and Hermione, Sirius and Remus. Neville. Your mum, Ginny. And you two. And for a bit I got scared, because most of the rest were _dead_ , you see. But not you. I knew that. I focused on the two of you, and it was like... looking into the sun. But you were smiling. All of you. You were all..." He shook his head, his dark locks flashing across Luna's pale skin. "I looked at you. And I felt so... Merlin. I don't have the words. But I felt _loved_. By every one of you. And it was the most frightening thing I'd ever felt. Then I realized, yes, you did love me, lucky bastard that I am, but that what I was feeling wasn't just _you_ , it was inside of me. It was me _feeling_ your love. Does that make any bloody sense at all?"  
  
Ginny nodded.  
  
"It makes perfect sense," Luna murmured softly. Ginny felt her friend's voice humming through her own pelvis.  
  
He looked between the two of them, then sighed. "So then... I looked down. Because Voldemort was on his knees, rolled up like ball, moaning. And I knelt down and I... I kissed him. On the top of his head. Like a little boy. And he looked up at me, with those red eyes, and..." Harry's voice had thickened. He was clearly struggling to be able to talk, to finish.  
  
Luna spoke again. "He asked you to kill him?"  
  
Harry nodded, and Ginny gasped. "To release him. That's what he said. And I understood him them, or I thought I did. But... he was nothing more than a terrified child who had been running away from something for so long that the flight had taken him over utterly. So I took my wand, and looked him in the eye, and cast the _Avada Kedavra_." Tears were now streaming down onto Luna's belly, and both girls reached out to touch his face. "He... It was like watching something melt away to reveal a totally different core. It was Tom Riddle. Just Tom Riddle. I picked him up and...."  
  
Harry wept, then, and Ginny found herself blanketing herself against his back, kissing his neck and trembling shoulders, embracing him--and Luna, who was gently comforting Harry from the other side. And when his sobs had finally subsided, Harry sighed and said. "When I saw the two of you at my door, today, I remembered that feeling, that certainty of your love, and I wanted to run to you both and hold you, and kiss you and tell you how much I loved you. But I, uh, didn't think you would understand it. Or welcome it."  
  
"Stupid git," Ginny said--she was crying too, for a change--and she kissed Luna and Harry both.  
  
"Oh," mused Luna, "I don't think it was stupid at all. I rather like the way things have worked out. Don't you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Camera obscura means--surprise!--'closed (or locked) room.' In philosophy and science, it is used to describe a 'black box'--a concept or object that you can't observe directly, that you have to deduce from external clues. So...
> 
> When I started writing this, I wasn't sure where I was going to go. I knew that Harry's solipsism was going to annoy Ginny. I knew that Luna was going to draw the other two together... But the image of the three of them in bed together came as a shock, and the rest of the series sort of flowed from there. Surprise!
> 
> I still rather like this idea for the final conflict between Harry and Voldemort.


	4. Hearts & Roses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Ginny hadn't always hated Valentine's Day."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Angst. Polyamory. Glitter.

Ginny Weasley hadn't always hated Valentine's Day. When she was little, she and her mum would sit in the kitchen for what felt like weeks beforehand, cutting out hearts and using charms and glue to make valentines to send off to school to her brothers. One of the very first spells she'd ever learned--done with her mother's wand so the Ministry wouldn't track it, very secret, don't tell--was the Canticle Charm that made the cards sing.  
  
She could remember sitting at the big kitchen table at the Burrow, happily chirping to her smiling mother about how, next year, she would have to make _ten_ cards--one each for Mum and Dad, one for each of her brothers, one for her funny friend Luna, and of course, one for the famous Harry Potter.  
  
No more making cards with Mum. A lot fewer to send, come to that.  
  
And of course her first Valentine's Day at Hogwarts had been one of the great humiliations of her life--that bloody dwarf singing to Harry... Agony beyond measure. And then to see that _Harry_ had the diary... That memory was almost as painful as the ones from later that year, or from last year.  
  
Second year was the time when Fred and George had forged a card from Harry telling her to meet him outside the potions classroom after curfew.  
  
Third year she'd torn up her Valentine from Charlie without even realizing it because Harry had been staring slack-jawed across the Great Hall at Cho.  
  
The next year _should_ have been better, but she'd been going out with Michael and he'd been a prat, not even remembering the holiday at all, glumly eating the candy she'd gotten him and stuffing her card into his bag before he'd even read it. And having to sit there after practice, sodden, cold and sad, listening to Harry complain about... Cho.  
  
Poor Cho. Ginny had wished some horrible things on her. And many of them had come to pass.  
  
Fifth year she'd had Dean, and at least he'd been a gent--he'd drawn the card himself with the picture of the two of them dancing; she had it still. She would take it out and watch the two of them whirling around the stylized dance floor, grinning at each other and at her. She'd always put it away before her tears could smear the delicate charcoal, because cry though she always did, the card made her remember happiness.  
  
But that had been the day that Luna's dad had died, and she and Ron and Harry had accompanied her back to Ottery St. Catchpole. Somehow, the sight of Luna crying, Luna who faced _everything_ with that otherworldly smile, was the most devastating thing of all.  
  
Last year... Well, last year she'd been numb still at Dean's death, and his family's.  
  
Though that _had_ been when Ron had punctuated a long argument at the feast by leaning across the table and finally, _finally_ , **_finally_ **kissing an astonished Hermione, to the loud applause of most of the Gryffindor table, not to mention many of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws and even a few Slytherins.  
  
She tucked the two roses she had been carrying into the pocket of her cloak and walked out the front door of the castle, and then around the side, away from the lake. No point in going in to lunch now. She wasn't hungry.  
  
It bothered Ginny that she was brooding. It was a lovely winter day--the snow she was trudging through was light as powdered sugar and just as white. But she hadn't seen Luna all day, and Harry...  
  
Well, Harry had never sent _anyone_ a valentine, as nearly as she could tell. Probably never thought anyone would want one from him, the stupid plank.  
  
She had sent them each one, which had felt odd. Since she and Luna had Apparated down to visit Harry at Grimmauld Place in October, Ginny had come to feel closer to the two of them than she had ever done to anyone not named Weasley... She loved them both, and that was disconcerting enough. And they both seemed genuinely to care for her, which was lovely if, again, a bit disconcerting. Ginny had come to depend on Luna--on _Luna_! What would Hermione have thought!--as the only person who could keep the beckoning abyss of sadness at bay, as the only person at Hogwarts who actually understood what she had gone through. And even terse-as-an-oyster Harry had begun to sprinkle his elegantly taciturn letters with phrases like "you are amazing" and "I love you." Phrases that she had been aching to hear since she was sitting at that table with her mother, charming heart-shaped cards to chirp love ballads from the sixties.  
  
And yet...  
  
And yet, in the time that they had spent together as pairs and as a trio over the past few months--down at Harry's home over the holidays, in Hogsmeade for a couple of weekends--Ginny had begun to feel that, for all of their professions to her, it was Luna and Harry who really shared something. They would get caught up in conversations sometimes that left here-and-now Ginny well and truly lost. And there were times that she would look at the two of them, Harry so intense, Luna so diffuse, and she would think, I should leave. _You_ are the ones who have something in common. I'm just the third wheel. But then they would both come and snuggle her and kiss her and soon everything in the world would seem just perfect.  
  
This February afternoon, trudging her way through the untracked snow, nothing seemed perfect. She'd lost so much in the last few years. And today she was feeling that if Harry and Luna couldn't give her what she needed, if they were only including her in their little threesome out of some sense of obligation and duty--which sounded more like Harry, since Merlin alone knew _what_ motivated Luna--then perhaps it was time for her to do the grown-up thing and tell them to have their romance without her.  
  
The Hogwarts graveyard was barely identifiable under the snow. Dumbledore's enormous monument, with its soaring phoenix, stood clear, its red granite burning against the whiteness, but the rest of the stones were all but buried. It didn't matter. Ginny knew where to go.  
  
Turning right along the black stone wall that bordered the cemetery, she made her way to the back row of memorials. There she found two doublewide markers right next to each other. She dusted off the first one and looked at the inscription, as she had so often since the day when she and Harry had found this spot together:

_Lily Evans Potter, BMg, OP_

| 

| 

_James Potter, BMg, OP_  
  
---|---|---  
  
_Born 27/10/60_

| 

| 

_Born 28/10/60_  
  
| 

_Died 31/10/81_

|   
  
_Loving Wife_

| 

| 

_Loving Husband_  
  
| 

_Loving Parents_

|   
  
_  
_She took the first rose from her pocket and placed it between their two names.  
  
Then she used her scarf to sweep the loose snow off of the top of the stone immediately to the left. Black marble shot through with veins of red and gold, its inscription tore at her heart even as the cold and the cruel, sharp edges of the letters chewed at her fingers through the wool of her gloves:

_Hermione Jane Granger, OP, OM, 2 nd (post.)_

| 

| 

_Ronald Bilius Weasley, OP, OM, 2 nd (post.)_  
  
---|---|---  
  
_Born 19/9/79_

| 

| 

_Born 1/3/80_  
  
| 

_Died 21/6/98_

|   
  
_Beloved Daughter_

| 

| 

_Beloved Son and Brother_  
  
| 

_Loving Friends_

|   
  
_  
_Once it was bare, she took a deep breath, then rested a chilled hand on each name. Her damp exhalation was misting the memorial, dimming its sheen, which was just as well because, at this moment, her eyes couldn't take so much brightness. Pinching her eyelids shut with one hand to keep back the tears, she reached in to her cloak with the other and pulled out the second rose, placing it by touch between Hermione's name and her brother's.  
  
It had been Harry's idea to inter their ashes together--Harry's of all people. Her father and the Doctors Granger had been so stunned by Ron and Hermione's deaths that they hadn't objected, and everyone else including Ginny had seen the justice of it. This was where they should be. Together.  
  
They would have been married six months.  
  
Luna and Harry should be together. She was sure of it. She'd watched them together. She... She'd _been_ with them together and seen how well they worked together, minds and bodies. They deserved each other, just as Hermione and Ron had, and she was holding them back out of her own selfishness and _weakness_.  
  
Merlin, she hated Valentine's Day.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
As she sat through her last class for the day, NEWT-level double Charms, Ginny regretted having passed on lunch. The idea of food still didn't appeal to her terribly, but her stomach had been twisting itself into knots, and the sound had made Andrew Kirke jump.  
  
Luna had been missing, which was odd; Luna never skived off, and she'd looked healthy enough at breakfast. Which had meant partnering with... Well, Ginny had nothing against Andrew. He was a nice enough boy, and had been her teammate on the Quidditch team for the past four years. He'd even been part of the DA from fifth year on. But, like just about every other student left at the school, he looked at Ginny--and at Luna too, for that matter--with mingled awe and fear. All because she was a bloody-- _literally_ bloody--veteran of the two horrible skirmishes at the Department of Mysteries.  
  
Attempting a complicated series of wand maneuvers under Kirke's nervous gaze, Ginny couldn't help but laugh at herself. Some veteran. A broken ankle and stunned the first time around. Last June, Luna had had to pull her off of Ron and Hermione's dead bodies so that they could help Harry fight Voldemort...  
  
Getting there just as that awful door closed. Wailing again because she had failed, because Harry too would die and Voldemort would win and she had _let_ Tom win...  
  
Then watching as the door opened again, and Harry carried out Tom's lifeless body.  
  
She had done nothing. She had stayed alive, twice--both times because Luna had _kept_ her alive, and because Harry had been willing to serve as a lightening rod, drawing evil towards himself and sparing her and the others.  
  
In her mind, she could hear Luna airily reminding her of the Troll she'd incapacitated, while a deadly serious Harry brought up the pair of Acromantula she'd killed, the trio of Death Eaters that she had immobilized in the Ministry's entry hall before they could attack him.  
  
Rubbish.  
  
With a final flick of her wand, Ginny finished the spell, and watched as the chintz pillow before her sprouted wings, soared up among the classroom rafters, and began an impressive outburst of nightingale song.  
  
"Well done, Miss Weasley," effused Professor Flitwick as the other Gryffindors and the Ravenclaws cheared. "Oh! Very well done!"  
  
Andrew nodded, as if his awe had been justified and reconfirmed.  
  
Bloody hell.  
  
When the Daily Prophet had run her picture below Harry's the next day--it had been a ridiculous photo taken as she'd been listening to her father's first speech as Minister for Magic, but on the page, it looked as if she was gazing adoringly up at Harry--the caption had read, "The Girl Who Loved."  
  
Idiots.  
  
Prats.  
  
Bloody bastards.  
  
If they only knew.  
  
Ginny knew that some of her frustration must have begun to seep out because Andrew was backing away, and Felicity Goldstein, the Ravenclaw, was casting a quick ward between them.  
  
She was gripping her wand so hard it felt as if she might grind it to sawdust; it was pointed at poor Andrew's teddy-bear chest.  
  
Blast. This would do wonders for her moody reputation. Andrew was a nice enough git, but Ginny really couldn't be fussed if he decided she was scary. She'd always liked Felicity, though.  
  
At least she had some sympathy for Harry, who had spent most of his time at Hogwarts being treated as a freak of nature. Luna, too, who was avoided and gawked at even now, Order of Merlin, Third Class, be damned.  
  
And there they were again, married in her thoughts, her two, and it took all Ginny had in her simply to put her wand down, close her eyes and take a deep breath. She heard a dull thud and a squeak as her pillow fell on top of Professor Flitwick.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
As Ginny gathered up her notes at the end of the class, Felicity came over and put a hand on her shoulder. "You okay, Ginny?"  
  
"Not really," Ginny sighed, not willing to lie. "I... Valentine's Day has always been pretty horrid for me, actually."  
  
Felicity gave her an uncertain smile. "Well," she said, "it's the perfect setup for disappointment, isn't it? Girls desperately wanting something, boys desperately trying to figure out what it is. I made Junius promise he wouldn't try to do anything fancy this year; last year he was in the Hospital Wing with pneumonia for a week. I mean, honestly: trying to write my name in the snow with Hell Fire. I ask you."  
  
Ginny laughed in spite of herself.  
  
Felicity smiled, apparently relieved, and then, as they began to walk out of the classroom, whispered in Ginny's ear, "May I ask a really personal question?"  
  
Ginny clutched her bag to her stomach, but she nodded.  
  
"Is it a boy that's the problem, or is it, uh, Luna?" Startled, Ginny looked at the Ravenclaw girl, whose face was darkening. As they stepped out into the crowded hallway, Felicity stammered quietly on, "It's just that... It's.... You and she have been very, uh, close, this year. WhichIthinkisgreat. And I'm not exactly Luna's _friend_ , I know, but she and I get on, usually, and she... I mean, I think today she's..."  
  
Ginny was about to thank Felicity, to try desperately not to tell her just how ridiculously complicated this all was, when a sound filled the hallway, silencing the milling, bewildered students: a musical chord.  
  
Like all of the students shuffling along the corridor, Ginny peered about, trying to identify the source of the sound.  
  
The chord struck again, but this time Ginny could hear clearly that it came from two instruments. Just as she identified the direction from which the music had come, she suddenly remembered another Valentine's Day in this very hallway, a dwarf sitting on Harry's shins, keeping him from leaving.  
  
The chord struck a third time, and suddenly two figures appeared, immediately in front of her--bloody Invisibility Cloak!: Harry and Luna, in absurd Greek costumes and wings, glitter on their cheeks, her dark boy and her fair girl, got up as Cupids, and Ginny squealed, because she knew what they were about to do.  
  
They sang, Harry strummed the guitar (not too well) and Luna plucked on some sort of lyre:  
  
 _Hair as red as a barbecue crisp  
  
Gay as a _chanson funebre  
  
 _She's been put to the test,  
  
So we know she's the best!  
  
Our one and our only Ginevra!  
  
_They struck a final wobbly chord, and bowed, Harry's wings flopping to one side.  
  
Stunned, Ginny stood there, gaping at them. Then the assembled students began to applaud loudly. The seventh years, tears streaming from their eyes--that first-year Charms class had been a double with Ravenclaw as well--where hooting and hollering. Felicity, grinning manically, was pounding Ginny's shoulder most uncharacteristically.  
  
Harry and Luna straightened up. Luna's blue-moon eyes scanned the crowd of wildly cheering students as if noticing they were there for the first time. Harry gazed at Ginny, his green eyes tentative even though his smile was cocky.  
  
Unable to speak, Ginny ran to them and pulled them both into a tight embrace. She was crushing Luna's wings, she was sure, and getting glitter all over, but she didn't care.  
  
"Hello, Ginny," Luna said, as if they had encountered each other by chance out by the lake.  
  
Ginny had realized, at last, just what it was that Harry and Luna shared: her. This was something she couldn't imagine either of them doing, except that they knew it would delight her. "Merlin, I love you both," she wheezed into their ears when laughter and tears allowed her.  
  
"Love you too, Ginny," Harry said.  
  
"Hmmm," said Luna.  
  
The crowd began to disperse, waving to Harry, clapping Ginny and Luna on the backs.  
  
"'Red as a barbecue crisp'?" Ginny howled, the laughter rendering her hoarse. "'Gay as a _chanson funebre_ '? What in the name of Merlin is a _chanson funebre_?"  
  
In answer, they both simply hugged her tight and kissed her on either cheek. "A, uh, funeral song," Harry muttered.  
  
"I thought of the 'gay' part," Luna said blithely, bringing fresh laughter from Ginny, laughter bubbling up from sources she'd forgotten were even there.  
  
"Funeral song! Where the bloody hell did you get _that_?" Ginny giggled.  
  
Harry gave her an embarrassed grin. "Fleur told me. It was the only thing we could find that rhymed with 'Ginevra.' It made me appreciate 'green as a fresh pickled toad,' I must say."  
  
"It's about time!" crowed Ginny, and the three of them--Ginny and her Cupids--walked down the stairs towards the Great Hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I was trying to write something fluffy for Valentine's Day. At the time, I was thinking a nice, normal Harry-and-Ginny-realize-blah-blah story. Then I got the image of Harry and Luna in Cupid costumes, and the opening line, and that was that.
> 
> Alphonso Cuaron said on the PoA DVD that JKR told him that the Hogwarts cemetary isn't near Hagrid's hut. So it has to be **somewhere...**


	5. Triptych

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Easter, and Ginny, Luna and Harry have many things to consider, and many causes to celebrate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Threesome. Pansexuality. Stream-of-consciousness sex (eek!).

Walking out of church, Ginny feels an almost foreign sense of well-being; the morning is beautiful, the service was lovely, and her quim can still remember the feeling of Harry and hums gently to itself with the knowledge that it will feel him again soon. As he shakes hands with Bill and the twins--Dad had to deal with the inevitable crisis at the Ministry, and Charlie wasn't able to make it back for Easter--Ginny thanks the vicar.  
  
"It's good to see to see you, Ginny," Father Whyte says, his long face bowed into a smile. "Since your mother's funeral, I haven't seen much of you and yours. The twins come by occasionally of a Sunday, but St. Catchpole's doesn't seem quite the same bereft of red heads."  
  
"We've scattered to the winds a bit since... everything that happened," Ginny answers, the sense of peace dimming slightly as she searches for understanding in his lined face, and finds it. Theodosius Whyte was a schoolmate of Ginny's parents at Hogwarts. The presence of a wizarding vicar at the small village church was part of what had attracted her father's family to this quiet corner of Devon centuries before, like many others over the past thousand years. That wasn't what had brought the Lovegoods, of course. But then, who ever knew what motivated the Lovegoods?  
  
Luna. Is she okay?  
  
Two of the Muggle parishioners wish Father Whyte a happy Easter, and he nods to them, smiling.  
  
"So," he continues in a quiet voice, his grey eyes twinkling, "am I going to be saying the banns for you and young Mr. Potter any time soon?"  
  
"Oh," Ginny splutters, inwardly cursing her fair skin. "We haven't quite gotten... to that point..." The thought of how Father Whyte would respond to the question that springs to mind--if we were to get married, how would our crypto-Buddhist girlfriend figure in to the High Church ceremony?--puts Ginny in one of her least favorite dilemmas: blush or giggle? Given the setting, she focuses on swallowing the laughter, and lets her skin color as it will.  
  
The good pastor apparently takes this for maiden modesty and laughs.  
  
Once Ginny and Harry have said goodbye to her brothers, they walk hand in hand through the village. Ginny grins as Harry takes in the West Country quaintness of Ottery St. Catchpole. It occurs to her that, for all that he's spent much of the last seven summers at the Burrow, he's never actually seen the village itself, except from the window of a car, or one very early morning on the way to the top of Stoatshead Hill. She resolves that she and Luna must properly show him the sights before the holiday week is out.  
  
"What was the vicar cornering you about?" Harry asks as they stride down the tiny high street towards the green. "Must have been good to turn you so pink."  
  
"Oh," says Ginny, "he was asking when he could expect to announce our engagement."  
  
Harry's thin eyebrows shoot above the frames of his glasses. "Our... engagement?"  
  
She grins. "Yours and mine. I didn't have the heart to tell him just what a mare's nest he was kicking up."  
  
"I guess not," Harry muses, running his hand through his unruly hair. "Ginny... How do you feel about that?"  
  
Suddenly she finds she can't look at him. Instead, she laughs. "I had dreams of walking up the aisle of St. Catchpole's in a white dress to meet you at the altar since... Well, since before I'd even met you."  
  
She looks over at him, expecting to see him blush, expecting to see him laughing. Expecting at most an embarrassed smirk and a smart comment about how silly they would have looked in wedding robes at nine and ten. But his face is deeply serious, his brows drawn together, his mouth a thin line. "Don't, Harry. You were supposed to find that ridiculous. I do."  
  
"Why?" he asks. "Why should you? You deserve that, Ginny. You deserve the chance to celebrate... to have your dream. I _want_ you to have that, I..." He snorts in disgust. "I don't know how."  
  
"Harry..." Ginny doesn't know what to say. Truth be told, she has been so pleased, so relieved to have found what she has with Harry and Luna that it hasn't occurred to her to think past today, past being together with both of them again. Certainly she hasn't thought about what is going to happen after she leaves school in June, and if she has, it hasn't been in terms of anything so public or conventional as marriage. As they walk on across the village green, hands coupled, she peers back at him through her fringe.  
  
His face is blank and pale, a look she has come to know well, but which she hoped she and Luna had banished. Damn. Of course Harry would think about this. His deepest, most primal wish is for a family; even if Ron hadn't whispered what Harry had seen in the Mirror of Erised to her that summer before her first year, she would have known. And all things being equal there is nothing in the world she would rather give: all of her love, every bit of it, and a dozen kids besides.  
  
Well, not quite every bit of it, because of course there is a certain blonde in Ottery Sutton who could claim every jot as much. "It's funny," Ginny muses. "I love you with all of my heart, Harry Potter. And I love Luna with all of my heart. How is that possible?"  
  
Though his face is still pale, Harry smiles. "When your brother and Hermione first started becoming, you know... I felt really uncomfortable. Left out. Do you know what she told me? 'Love isn't a zero-sum game.'"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Well," he says, riffling his hair with his free hand, "as nearly as I could understand, it meant that it wasn't finite. Giving it to one person doesn't mean taking it away from another. One couldn't ever give all of it away. Which was a shock to me, because, of course, that was precisely how the Dursleys had always behaved." His impish smile makes her heart flutter. Did she inspire that in him? She can only pray so, because if she can make Harry give her that smile on a regular basis, Ginny is fairly sure life will never be altogether bad.  
  
Crossing off of the green and back onto the high street, she returns his grin and gives his hand a squeeze. "Did my brothers manage to treat you like a person this morning? Merlin knows I told them what was coming if I found out they'd teased you too much."  
  
That earns her a full laugh. "No. I think you frightened them to death. The twins could barely look me in the face when I came out of your room. I did get a grin or two from Bill, but nothing too mortifying." Again his face closes off, but it is just for a moment. "Your dad..." he begins, and then looks into her eyes.  
  
She shrugs. "He's been very tired since he took over at the Ministry." She knows, however, that even Harry is perceptive enough to realize that seeing her and Harry together could only make her father wish that her mother had been there.  
  
Harry nods. Then, out of nowhere, he pulls her body to his and kisses her, right there in the middle of the street in Ottery St. Catchpole on Easter Sunday for anyone to see, and her nipples blossom and her blood flows outward until her skin is singing from ears to ankles, and she feels as if the entire village can see just what this man does to her and that might be just fine.  
  
He moans, and it is her turn to laugh. "Clearly I need reinforcements!" she giggles in his ear. "Good thing Luna's waiting for us."  
  
"Ginny," he whispers, "I... It was so different, so nice, being with just you last night. I missed Luna, but... I didn't, you know? And I just feel..."  
  
"Guilty?" she says, her hand running up the middle of his chest. He nods, and she can't help but sigh. "I know," she says. And they step back from each other.  
  
They are just outside of Fawcett & Sons Apothecary, and through the glass of the door, Ginny can feel more than see the hawkish sneer of Sarah Fawcett, her expression clearly broadcasting the message, "Get a room." Ginny pulls Harry back along towards the road to the south.  
  
As they are clearing the village, Harry asks, "What has Sarah What'shername got against you, anyway? I mean, she's always treated you and Luna like rubbish."  
  
"Oh," Ginny mutters. "You saw her. Yeah, well, three witch girls, all the same age, in a town like this, our mums used to get us together all of the time. We even schooled together for a while, before Luna's mum died. And the thing was.... See, Sarah always hated Luna. Just hated her. And for years she kept trying to get me not to like her either. And then, not long after Luna's mum passed on, and Luna was even... odder than usual, Sarah turns to me one afternoon, when we're all over at her home, right above the shop there, and says that I need to choose: I can be her friend--Sarah's--or I can keep seeing Luna. And that was it. I walked out and never went back." Ginny shakes her head. "Sarah couldn't believe it. And Luna kept telling me to go to her. But I knew where my loyalty lay. Then, when they were both sorted into Ravenclaw... I thought it was a cruel joke. And of course, Sarah's the one behind everyone calling Luna 'Looney,' and she's been getting the other Ravenclaw girls to steal things from Luna, and treat her like shit, and..." Ginny can feel her anger rising, and she takes a deep breath.  
  
"And she's jealous," Harry says quietly. "Because Luna is a war hero, and she's got you, and she's got me, and all Sarah Fawcett has is a string of boyfriends who can't stand her and a face that looks as if one of Snape's nastier experiments went wrong right beneath her nose."  
  
Ginny laughs, and now--out as they are passing the base of Stoatshead Hill--she pulls _him_ in for a long, passionate kiss.  
  
Ginny can feel his cock beginning to strain against her stomach, pulsing. An automobile sails by, and they both look up, or she would have had her hand down the front of his trousers.  
  
Once the car has disappeared across the Ottery River bridge, Harry whispers into her ear, "Good thing we're getting close to Luna's. Think I'm going to need reinforcements." And he trails a thumb across one of her nipples--delicious cruelty.  
  
They enter the small clump of cottages that marks metropolitan Ottery Sutton, then meander up the lane that leads to Hesperides House, Luna's home. Seeing the little house with its surrounding tangle of overgrown apple trees, Ginny sighs and mumbles, "I hope..."  
  
Harry squeezes her hand and nods. Luna hasn't been alone in her family's house since her father died a year ago on St. Valentine's, his blood turned to ink--Bellatrix Lestrange's psychotic sense of humor playing out to the last. Luna insisted that they leave her alone overnight, and they both agreed, in part because Ginny wanted to spend Easter with her family and barely had the courage to explain Harry to them.  
  
Harry will spend tonight with Luna. And Ginny is finding her heart to be far more conflicted about that than she would have expected. Which seems silly: she and Luna have had many nights alone this year. And she had Harry all to herself last night. But in spite of herself she is afraid...  
  
Afraid that Luna and Harry will discover that they don't need her. That she's superfluous. And Ginny has spent most of her life feeling superfluous. Even though she knows this is bollocks, even if they have proved to her, time and again, that they will not forget her. The hardest thing in the world is to trust two people you love with each other.  
  
Two things land her back in her body: Harry's hand, dense and warm in hers; the sight Luna's figure standing in the doorway.  
  
She is in a red velvet dress that is totally out of character with the day and with Luna herself-- low-cut and skin-tight over her lithe dancer's body. Her wheaten hair tumbles unbound over a small matching opera cape that hangs off-center from her narrow shoulders. A slash of dark red lipstick makes Luna's skin look even paler than usual, makes her eyes seem almost colorless. Ginny hasn't seen her wear make-up since they were both seven.  
  
Desire squeezes Ginny's middle. Harry's hand spasms in hers, and she can hear his breath catch; he is as stunned by their lover's appearance as she is.  
  
"Hello, Ginevra," she breathes. "Hello, Harry. I've been sorting things." Slowly, tantalizingly, she unties the cape's knot at her throat. "How was church?"  
  
"L-lovely," stutters Harry. Ginny is speechless. "You c-could have joined us..."  
  
"Oh, I never go to church," Luna says, separating the red, silken lengths of the tie and examining them. "My family never did. It all seemed so... silly. My mother used to read from _The Thread of Love_ when the day seemed important." She turns and walks inside, loosing one end of the cape. It slips off the shoulder and down her back, trailing behind her on the floor.  
  
"The?..." Ginny is transfixed by the sway of Luna's boyish hips beneath the red velvet.  
  
" _Thread of Love._ " Luna drops the other string, and the cape flops to the ground. "There are three ways to reach an understanding of the world: Duty, Power or Love. And love is really the nicest, don't you think?" Luna is not looking back, simply gliding forward. One thin arm reaches up behind her and slowly pulls down the gown's zipper, revealing Luna's long, white naked back and high buttocks. She walks right out of the dress, and through the door into her room.  
  
 **  
  
**  
  
Velvet sounds like what it is, swishing, sliding down over your no-hips. You are wet and hungry, and a year ago you would not have known what this feeling meant, not really, even when you rubbed yourself raw thinking of Ronald or of Harry or of Neville or of Ginevra or of Cho, with her butter-toned skin and the freckles on her nose that you so wanted to taste.  
  
Wit beyond measure...  
  
Nipples tingle as air strikes. Snakebites for breasts you have, tiny nipples swelling between your pinching fingers. That's what Mother always said, that she had snakebites till you were born and then she had apricots. Ginevra has peaches, ripe and firm and juiced and muscled she is, all of her, square-shouldered as her brother but small, and so _present_. Agni. _Agnus Dei_. Sacrifice to the Sacrificial. Sufficient unto the day.  
  
Did they understand? People don't understand so often. But Harry James Potter and Ginevra Molly Weasely, they seem to understand so often. So often. Are they?...  
  
There they are. At the door. Flame and shadow. Ale-bottle seaglass, their eyes, brown and green, naught but sand and fire. But they see. They understand.  
  
You see the hunger in their eyes and it unlocks the blaze in your middle, your center. You kneel on your bed, where you were weeping all last night, and you hold your arms out to Ginevra, to Harry. "I am the ritual, I am the sacrifice, I am the offering, I am the officiant, I am the fire, and I am the oblation."  
  
Harry, his fingers funbling as he zips down Ginevra's dress, looks serious. Ginevra smiles, teeth white. As her dress pools at her feet, she says, "Are we supposed to drink you up? Is that the idea?"  
  
"Hmmm." That sounds like a lovely idea. You hold out your arms to them and they come to you, and the ache, the cold of this house evaporates beneath their stinging kisses. He finds one side of your neck and she the other, and your fingers tangle themselves in their hair as you feel the first flutter of faint release at that initial contact. They both smell of the lavender soap that her mother always concocted, and you wish that you could have been there in that shower, bathing yourself in them, and you fall backwards, pulling their two twined bodies onto you, kissing her flame to life, and her small lips meet yours and you hear Harry groan, his hands dancing over your front, your snakebite breasts, and you feel another shudder, a tiny release, and they can do that, can bring you to bliss over and over and over. Her tongue is so small. You love the feel of it in your mouth, in your ear, on your neck. You want the feel of it on your pearl.  
  
The light flares briefly and time starts again as Harry kneels back, pulling off his shirt, tearing off his trousers, his pants. His him springs out, and you note a new smell as you flop over and slither your way towards their pelves, the rich, tart scent of her on him: they have fucked already this morning, Eostra's festival, Eostra's bunny, like rabbits, and you want to taste him in her, but first...  
  
Her mouth is too small for him, and you know that makes her sad, that she cannot please him that way, though he clearly does not mind. But he loves your wide mouth and he whimpers now as you run your lips over the musty head of him. That first time at Grimmauld Place, tasting him and savoring the flavors and the textures, so new, and he shouted when he came, hot, bitter, earthy taste like the Burn Balm potion your mother fed you once when you scorched your tongue, and you had been frightened that you were hurting him, but Ginevra whispered to you and stroked you, and kissed the overflow off of your chin. He groans already, hot, but not this time, no, you want to see him in her, taste him in her, and so, your hands still on his testicles you slide beneath her, kissing her stomach, leaning her forward so that her hair sizzles over your own flat chest, her red tangle above you like a Mark of Life--this way to Heaven. Two small beauty marks line up beneath her navel like the end stars of the Big Dipper, pointing the way to Polaris.  
  
One hand looses Harry. Your fingers dance, not quite touching the pinker-than-yours skin of her ribs, her waist. The fuzz on her bum. She shivers. Around behind to the split fruit of her, already damp and you can't stop yourself from pushing up to taste. Yes. Soursweet like green apple she is, and you can taste his musk on her lips, on her jewel. And taste. And taste.  
  
Harry is kissing your forehead and her bum, but you don't think he'll mind, and so you lead him forward by his thick signpost until the tip of him spreads her fine, pink ruff and Ginevra gasps into your hip and you groan to see her quiver as he slowly enters her....  
  
You love to feel Harry inside of you, pressing and stretching. You love to feel her fine fingers and her tongue moving over you as they are now, trembling. You love to feel spasms of release in their encircling arms.  
  
But nothing excites you quite as much as being right here, your nose and mouth and fingers at their point of union, your spit mixing with his juices and hers to make a single moist libation to pour upon the flames of your passion, to feed your fire. You drink them in and they are part of you, and you are not alone.  
  
His testicles tighten as they slide faster and faster along your forehead and your nose. He is close. Wit beyond measure is... Ginevra screams into your navel, all too soon, and Harry joins her, their thighs spasming on either side of your face. They each reach release and you drink them in until you are sated. Libation of the gods.  
  
Your mother liked to say that love given leaves more to bestow. She was also fond of quoting the various analogs of the Golden Rule: love thy neighbor as thyself; do unto others as you would have them do unto you; thou art that. As your lovers uncouple slurpily, you rest in the glow of...  
  
Harry's kiss on your _mons veneris_. "I love you." Ginevra's lips on your hip. "We missed you."  
  
He rolls you onto your tummy-tum on top of him, and you feel the steam rising from your back. Who knew you had gotten so sweaty? Her fingers find your breasts even as her mouth continues to explore your spine and you feel yourself blossom with desire.  
  
When his mouth surrounds your pearl, you whimper, and part of it is disappointment because as wonderful and loving as his mouth is, hers is like liquid flame but you can't complain for feeling so good and she will...  
  
As Harry laps at your clitoris, Ginevra's tiny tongue finds your rosebud and...  
  
FUCK  
  
One of your mother's other favorite aphorisms was that time is an illusion. Your father, when tipsy, would inevitably add, "And lunchtime doubly so!" and they would both giggle. But she would encourage you to look at death not as a period, but as a comma, and she would say that, if you were lucky and were paying attention, you would find moments of release, little parentheses in the sentence of your life, when you could stand outside of time. Free. Consumed in the bonfire of eternity.  
  
Release.  
  
Not alone.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Lying on Luna's bed, her long leg draped over one of his shoulders, Ginny's head resting on the other, Harry suddenly notices the pictures. There are so many of them that they take up every square inch of wall space not reserved for bookshelves, the window or the door. There are so many of them that they almost fade out of notice--do fade out of notice, since in all of the time that they've been here, this is the first time Harry has noticed them.  
  
Every one is a painting of a couple. Dancing. Kissing. Strolling. A maiden handing a mounted knight a flower and blushing demurely. Harry peers at an ice-skating couple just over Ginny's naked back, and the woman winks at him before executing a deft pirouette. Dozens of embraces. Of longing glances.  
  
He kisses Luna's ankle, and she sighs.  
  
If he had imagined what sort of artwork Luna would have decorated her room with, this wouldn't have been it--trees perhaps, or mythic beasts. But not this.  
  
Ginny hisses against Harry's shoulder. Something that Luna is doing has gotten her attention. He leans over and kisses the top of her new-penny head. "Ginny?"  
  
"Mmmm?"  
  
"What are those paintings in your bedroom at the Burrow?"  
  
"Mmmm?"  
  
"Those beautiful Muggle prints of the paintings of those blonde women..." There are three of them, clustered over Ginny's desk. Aside from various stuffed animals, they are the only decoration in her room. Each is staring at the viewer with otherworldly eyes. Each is alone.  
  
"Botticelli," Ginny sighs.  
  
"Who?" Harry asks, knowing he isn't helping her out by running his fingers along her ribs.  
  
"Wizard artist from about six hundred years ago. Painted for Muggles. Bill brought back the prints from Florence about five years back... They're all so.... Mmmm."  
  
Solitary blonde women with eyes that stare out at you from the other side of the universe.  
  
"Why?" Ginny asks, taking the initiative, nipping at his nipple. "What pictures have you got up in _your_ bedroom?"  
  
With a start that is caused in part by an epiphany and in part by her tongue, Harry gasps. "Uh, I don't have any. Never have, anywhere."  
  
Luna works her way languidly up Harry's body in a manner that leaves Harry feeling anything but languid. Otherwhere eyes.  
  
"You've got all of those portraits at Grimmauld Place," Ginny muses.  
  
"Yeah, but... I never had a room I felt as if I could decorate...." Harry gasps as each girl takes a nipple in her mouth.  
  
Luna leans up and looks at Harry from across the universe. "If you could decorate your room with anything, what would it be?"  
  
Harry grins, threading his arms around his sun and moon. "That's easy," he says.  
  
And he pulls them both up into a long, satisfying kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This story originally grew out of Harry's section, which at one point I posted as a ficlet entitled "Art."
> 
> I knew that I'd be writing a sexually explicit piece for these three at some point. That it ended up being set at Easter was... unexpected. I hope no one is offended--no offense was meant. Think of it as a fertility rite.:-)
> 
> Luna's section is one of the hardest things I've ever written--and one of the most satisfying. That James Joyce could write whole novels that way boggles my mind. If people want, I'd be happy to decode some of it, but I think it stands as is.
> 
> In Sanskrit, the word for thread (and for sermon, as it happens) is sutra--related to the English "suture." The word for love is kama. So The Thread of Love would be?...
> 
> This chapter was translated into Russian by [Роман](https://hogwartsnet.ru/mfanf/member.php?l=0&id=1653hp%3fl=0&id=1653)


	6. Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's love. And then there's love. And then there's love. Ginny, Luna and Harry struggle to come to terms with what exactly it is that they're building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Angst. Polyamory. British marital law (yawn).

It had become a routine: lunch at the Gryffindor table, dinner at the Ravenclaw table. They usually ate breakfast separately, since Luna, only child that she was, was a late riser. Ginny would never have eaten in the mornings at the Burrow if she hadn't learned to get up and out early.  
  
Mostly they talked about classes, or the DA, which Ginny was still astonished to find herself running. Or they ate silently and talked about nothing at all.  
  
But Ginny knew that Luna was thinking about her, and about Harry. _She_ was thinking about Luna and Harry.  
  
Since Valentine's Day, when Luna and Harry had serenaded Ginny in the Charms corridor for everyone to see, the reaction to Ginny's trips across the Great Hall had been very interesting. Some of the Ravenclaws--the younger ones in particular--looked at her with the mingled awe and terror that she was used to people reserving for Harry. The sixth and seventh years, who knew her better, split into two factions. The first group--the ones who hadn't been among Luna's torturers through her first years at the school, the ones who had belonged to the DA _before_ Tom Riddle's defeat--suddenly became incredibly friendly. Felicity Goldstein, Anthony's sister, was one of those, always sitting on Ginny's other side, chatting away, laughing about teachers, asking after her brothers--the surviving ones--and after Harry, of course. Whether she or any of the other 'friendly' Ravenclaws had any idea that she, Luna and Harry were anything more than friends and former comrades-in-arms, Ginny had no idea, and really didn't wish to know.  
  
The other group--small, but made up of some of the more prominent students in the house--treated Ginny as if she came bearing some sort of horrible disease. They'd always treated Luna that way, but clearly they felt that the last of the Weasleys had been tarred by the same brush. If they only knew.  
  
Ginny was picking at a pork chop one evening, listening to Felicity blather on about the most recent shake-up at the Ministry—Ginny's dad had elevated the Being Division of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures; it was now the Department of Inter-Being Cooperation, much to the disgust of many wizarding traditionalists, of which Felicity could certainly not be counted as one. Ginny wasn’t listening, though she was interested. Her mind was on the Doodlebug that Luna was controlling lackadaisically with her wand as she ate her peas; it was doing lazy figure 8s up the inside of Ginny's thigh, and Ginny was having a hard time not making sounds that even the open-minded Felicity would have found... inappropriate.  
  
Just at the point when Ginny was about to try to ask Luna to stop it--without moaning--a shadow passed across her plate.  
  
She looked up and saw Sarah Fawcett standing there with Orla Quirke and with Ethelred Bradley, her current boyfriend--her fourth since the beginning of the winter holidays, if the rumor was true. The three Ravenclaws were looking down at them--at Ginny and Luna--with expressions of frank loathing. "Look, Looney, if you've got to make out with your girlfriend every meal," Sarah hissed, "you could at least keep it over on the other side of the hall. They like to watch." Ginny felt the Doodlebug fade.  
  
Ethelred snickered. "At least I hear Harry Potter likes to... Probably all he's goo..."  
  
Ginny found herself standing, one fist gripping Sarah Fawcett's tie, the other pushing her wand up under her boyfriend's quivering chin. She wasn't aware of having moved.  
  
Luna's voice wafted from behind Ginny's shoulder. "That wand hexed Rabastan Lestrange so badly that he was in St. Mungo's for two months before he was sent to Azkaban. I watched it stun a rather large Mountain Troll in one shot. And this one," she went on, the tip of her wand wiggling in Ginny's peripheral vision, "killed Lucius Malfoy about twenty feet from where you're standing, Orla. So you might consider apologizing."  
  
The three Ravenclaws spluttered, and Ginny let go, feeling her arm muscles twitch.  
  
Professors McGonagall and Flitwick were scurrying their way up from the head table.  
  
No, it wasn't enough. Ginny looked around at Felicity and the other Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs sitting nearby, their eyes wide. If they're going to whisper and gawk, she thought, let them have something to look at. Her eyes back on Sarah Fawcett, Ginny pulled Luna's face to hers and gave her lover a deep kiss, finishing with a resounding smack that echoed through the now-silent hall. Sarah, Orla and Ethelred gave grimaces of disgust; behind them, Owen Caulfield, a black-haired Hufflepuff fifth-year, looked like a child on Christmas morning.  
  
Tossers.  
  
"Hello, Ginevra," Luna said, very seriously.  
  
The headmistress's whip-crack of a voice set time back on its normal course. "Ladies, Mr. Bradley. What is the meaning of this?"  
  
When none of the five standing students spoke, Felicity Goldstein piped up. "Professor, these three were being really foul to Ginny and Luna, they provoked..."  
  
Professor McGonagall held up a hand. "Be that as it may, we cannot have students threatening one another, no matter the provocation. Miss Lovegood, Miss Weasley, five points each from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw for raising your wands in anger. I expect better from the two of you. You are both decorated war veterans. Oh, and speaking of provocative, another five points from Gryffindor, Miss Weasley, for the rather excessive public display. I don't care whom you choose to kiss. No one needs to see it."  
  
She turned towards Fawcett, Bradley and Quirke, whose faces froze in matching smirks. "As for the three of you... Five points from Ravenclaw. Each. For thoroughly disregarding the spirit and letter of the Student Conduct guidelines. We've had this discussion before, Miss Fawcett. But the two of you," she glared at Orla and Ethelred, "should know that this school has students of East Indian, West Indian, African, Near Eastern and East Asian descent. We have Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Jewish and even a few English. We have five hags, two part-elves and a part-Veela."  
  
Gabrielle, thought Ginny, glancing over toward the white-haired Gryffindor second year. Damn. I promised Fleur I'd keep an eye on her.  
  
Professor McGonagall drilled on. "We have purebloods, halfbloods and Muggle-borns. We also have at least eighteen gay males, fourteen lesbians and a half dozen bisexuals. Those are just the ones who have seen fit to join the Socrates and Sappho Club, which meets in Madam Hooch's office on alternate Thursdays at noon, and includes, as I understand it, a number of heterosexual members, and which," the headmistress added, her expression becoming increasingly predatory, "I suggest you attend for next two months, unless you'd rather be spending every evening between now and the end of the term cleaning the dungeons for our excellent Caretaker, Madam Crotchett. _Do I make myself clear_?"  
  
"Yes, headmistress," said the thoroughly mortified trio.  
  
Her pupils vibrating behind square lenses, Professor McGonagall took in the three of them, then Luna and Ginny, then gazed around the Great Hall, where a stunned silence reigned. "That will be all," she said, and strode back to the head table with Professor Flitwick toddling in her wake.  
  
Orla and Ethelred pulled Sarah back to their seats.  
  
Feeling the weight of nearly a thousand gazes upon her, Ginny walked as calmly as she could in the opposite direction and out the door before she began to cry.  
  
  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
It amused Luna that Ginevra was always surprised when Luna knew where to find her. It was really quite simple. It was just a matter of deducing what it was that Ginevra was missing.  
  
When she was missing Ronald or his girlfriend, she would go out to the cemetery and sit by their headstone. When it was her mother, Ginevra could be found down in the kitchens, sipping on hot chocolate. If it were Professor Hagrid or Professor Dumbledore, she would be huddled out on the front steps.  
  
If she was missing Harry, she tended to go down to the Quidditch pitch and fly.  
  
And if she was missing Luna.... Well, then she would come to Luna, and it wasn't at all surprising that Luna could find her then.  
  
When she was feeling isolated, as she clearly was now, and had been at the beginning of the first term, Ginevra would wander down to the huge beech tree above the lake, seeking the ghosts of her friends for comfort.  
  
Luna too had fond memories of sitting against that tree with Ronald and the curly-haired girl, Ginevra and Dean, Harry and Susan. Sweet Neville, whom Luna tried so hard not to frighten--alas, to no avail.  
  
Too many ghosts crowding in, that was the problem. It made it difficult to concentrate sometimes.  
  
Luna walked slowly out across the damp grass towards the mist-enshrouded beech. Gloaming, the Scots called it, and that's what it was, this evening mist, yes. And in the midst, at the foot of the tree, just where Luna had expected to find her, wept Ginevra, flame-bright hair wild across her back, her arms wrapped tight around her shins, her face buried in her knees.  
  
When Luna knelt beside her, Ginevra snarled, "Will you just _go away_?"  
  
"No," replied Luna. "I don't think that I shall."  
  
Ginevra's face twisted, then, into a mask just like the portrait of Manfred the Miserable outside of the Arithmancy classroom, and she threw her arms around Luna's waist and bawled into Luna's thigh.  
  
Luna stroked the long copper locks that spilled across her knees onto the ground. Such fine hair. So pretty. It was the same color as Ronald's, but... pretty. "Do you know," Luna said, when Ginevra's grasp around her waist loosened slightly, "I did something really awful to Sarah Fawcett just before Christmas."  
  
Ginevra gave a brief hiccough that Luna took as a sign to continue.  
  
"Well," she said, "you know how she always takes something of mine just before the holidays? One year it was my mother's tortoise-shell brush. Last year she wandered off with the glass unicorn my father had charmed for me for my birthday. Well, I knew it was coming this year. So I kept telling all of the other seventh year Ravenclaws about a sprig of mistletoe that Neville had given me the previous year, that I would sleep with it under my pillow every night. Well, of course, Neville would never do any such thing as give me a sprig of so dangerous a plant as mistletoe, and I would never sleep with it, but Sarah, of course, didn't know that at all. So the morning before we all left--when I knew the House Elves would be cleaning all of the linens and airing our beds for two weeks--I hid a particularly Nargle-infested branch of mistletoe under my pillow before I went to take a shower. And of course, when I got back, it was gone! That's why Sarah has gone through so many boyfriends this term," Luna concluded, feeling very pleased with herself. "Nargles."  
  
Ginevra looked up at Luna from her lap, her fair, fine features blotchy but twisted into a bemused smirk. "Luna Lovegood, you naughty girl!"  
  
"All of these years of being friends with Weasleys finally paid off," she said, and leaned down to kiss the only girl it had ever occurred to her to love.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Seeing the two of them twined together at the foot of the tree, Harry let out a sigh of relief. He had been so panicked when Professor McGonagall had Floo'd to tell him that, as she'd put it, there'd been "a wee problem" with Ginny and Luna that he'd tried to leap through the fire only to be repulsed by the school's wards. The headmistress had fixed him with an amused smirk, clearly judging just how deeply the two seventh-year girls' welfare affected Harry.  
  
Once he'd calmed down somewhat, she had informed him in general terms of the incident at dinner. Chastened, Harry had asked if he might come to the school to talk to the girls. The headmistress had agreed, and dryly suggested that he Apparate to the main gates of the school and begin by looking for them at the beech tree over the lake.  
  
There he found them, curled up in each other's arms, Ginny a fierce, self-contained flame, Luna coherent mist. His sun and moon. Something in him simply uncoiled, and he found himself pulling more fog up from the lake and wrapping it around them, setting wards to keep out eavesdroppers and interlopers, and enchanting the boulder just below the tree to radiate warmth. How strange that the powerful charms and hexes that he had learned from Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore in order to protect himself from Tom Riddle could be turned to so pleasant a purpose....  
  
He watched them kiss, fingers exploring, and was annoyed and more than a little amused to feel desire unwinding within him.  
  
After the first night that they had come to him, had _slept_ with him, Harry had all but physically scourged himself for allowing some adolescent sex fantasy to make him take advantage of two such amazing, beautiful girls. And the fantasy had been there, he couldn't deny it. Yet he had come to realize that the reality was infinitely more complex and challenging than some imagined tryst that he'd wanked himself to sleep with during the long, lonely nights after Susan's death, and Ron and Hermione's. That he had been struggling to define his feelings for Ginny since he was twelve, and was still struggling to do so, love and desire and shame mingled with an overpowering urge to protect her from any source of pain--including Harry himself. That he had been struggling to shake off what he felt for Luna since she had reawakened his comatose sense of being human outside the Gryffindor common room at the end of his fifth year.  
  
And that they loved each other every bit as much as either of them loved him, which had been more complicated than he ever would have expected.  
  
His obsession with Cho had been difficult enough to sort out. Dating Susan hadn't been terribly dramatic, but simply hurdling the day-to-day challenges of having a _girlfriend_ , of sharing even that much with another person had overwhelmed Harry--growing up with the Dursleys hadn't exactly overburdened him with skills at handling intimacy.  
  
Poor Susan. She had been so much more than he deserved, and yet he hadn't even had the decency to love her properly. Her death had destroyed him, but partly because he was wracked with guilt that, even that last time that they'd made love, knowing that a crisis was coming and that he might die, it had never occurred to him that _she_ would be the one to sacrifice herself.  
  
And when Tom had tricked him into that locked room and he had been confronted by all of those whom he loved, who loved him, even then, yes, she had been there with so many others... But it had been his parents whom he'd been aware of, and Sirius and Remus and Molly Weasley, Ron and Hermione. Neville.  
  
Luna and Ginny.  
  
At Susan's memorial, lovely, sweet, kind, unflinching Susan's _funeral_ , he had wept, embracing Madam Bones and telling her he hadn't loved her niece half as deeply as she deserved. She had taken that as a statement of respect and honor for Susan, which it was. It had also been the bald, unvarnished truth.  
  
"Hello, Harry," Luna said. She and Ginny were looking at him--Luna's mouth turned slightly up, Ginny's slightly down.  
  
He sat next to them against the tree.  
  
"Oh, Harry," Ginny sighed, nuzzling his neck.  
  
"Did you enjoy watching?" Luna said, her fingers still running through Ginny's hair.  
  
"Of course," Harry said, embracing them both, though he knew enjoyment covered at most a third of what he had felt.  
  
Luna continued, "Ethelred Bradley said..."  
  
Ginny stiffened, "Oh, Merlin, Harry, he and Sarah Fawcett and Orla were spewing the most horrid..." She shuddered.  
  
Harry squeezed her to him, his fingers meeting Luna's. "Professor McGonagall told me something had happened, but not what was said. Does it matter?"  
  
"You have no idea how close I came to killing him, Harry. I had my wand up in his throat and I was going to cast an Engorgement Charm on his foul tongue till he choked to death. If Luna hadn't stopped me..." She sobbed, and Harry and Luna kissed her forehead and the back of her neck, respectively.  
  
"'Size is no guarantee of power'," Harry murmured.  
  
"What?" Ginny sniffled.  
  
"Something George said about you once," Harry said. "Did you hurt him? Bradley?"  
  
Ginny shook her head.  
  
"And does whatever idiotry he belched up change how you feel about me or Luna?"  
  
She shook her head even more emphatically.  
  
"Well, nothing he could possibly have said could change how I feel about you two. Luna?"  
  
"Oh," she said diffusely, "sticks and stones..."  
  
Harry nodded and continued, "So to hell with Ethelred Bradley--I always thought he was a complete prat--and to hell with Sarah and Orla and anyone else who treats you as anything less than the miracle you are."  
  
Ginny sobbed then, and Harry was surprised to find that he had expected it. He and Luna held her tight. He had anticipated her crying it out, winding down, but she seemed to be ramping up. "You two... What do you _do_ with me? I'm so _broken_.... Everyone at the school will think I'm a _freak_..."  
  
Harry tried to comfort her, but she was past comforting.  
  
"I _am_ a freak _,_ " Ginny hissed, "I want to break things and hurt people and hurt myself and I miss Percy and Ron and Hermione and _I MISS MY MUM...._ " She was wailing now, and it was only because Luna and Harry held her between them that she wasn't thrashing. "I miss my mum so much, you don't know!..." She stopped suddenly and gasped, then looked up, her eyes and mouth all perfect circles. "Oh. Harry. Luna. I'm so sorry. I forgot."  
  
Harry bent to kiss her and found Luna's lips already there. He leaned down to kiss Ginny's ear and whispered, "Lucky you." He heard a sharp intake of her breath. "So did you really snog Luna right in the middle of the Great Hall? Wish I could have seen _that_." Then he kissed the ear again and the neck, and her laugh wetly tickled his own shoulder.  
  
They nuzzled her and caressed her, and soon she was curled up between them, and Harry was running his hand in a slow circle on her back while Luna sang some fey lullaby that pulled at Harry's heart and memory.  
  
Gradually, Ginny fell asleep.  
  
Luna kept singing, and Harry watched her for a while, glowing in her unearthly way in the dim evening light. Her lips chapped with kissing, her hair tangled and sparkling with mist, she looked like nothing less than some fairy queen. "I love you, Luna."  
  
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes stopped her song, looked at him, and did something Harry had almost never seen her do: she blinked. Then she gazed back down at Ginny and began humming the tuneless tune again.  
  
"Luna?..."  
  
"I love you, too, Harry." Her eyes, unwavering now, met his.  
  
"You don't have to say that."  
  
"No," she agreed. "I don't." She looked down again and began to play with a lock of Ginny's hair. "I'm not used to people saying such things to me, you see. Ginevra is the first girl I've ever kissed. And you're only the second boy, and poor Neville was terrified of me, so discussions of finer feelings somehow never quite came up."  
  
"I understand," Harry said.  
  
Luna looked up again, her large eyes growing even wider. "You do? How nice."  
  
He took in her strange, silver gaze. "Yeah, actually, I do." Then he shook his head. "Damn, Luna, I don't know what to do. How do we make this work?"  
  
She began pulling some of Ginny's locks into a fine, complicated braid. "Well, you could ask Ginevra to marry you."  
  
"I... What?" Now it was Harry's turn to goggle. "Luna, what?... You do that on purpose, don't you?"  
  
"Do what?"  
  
"Answer rhetorical questions with totally random statements."  
  
"Oh." She gave a sly smile that struck Harry as out of place but wickedly sexy on her serene face. "Well, I do occasionally, it's true. Sometimes it's funny to watch people splutter like Saltmarsh Mudguppies. But no, in this case I was actually offering a serious answer to the problem you were posing."  
  
"But how would Ginny and me getting married possibly solve our problems? We couldn't marry you too, and that defeats the whole purpose."  
  
"But it would make Ginny happy," Luna sighed, stroking her friend's sleep-softened chin with a single finger. "And that would make me happy. Wouldn't it make you happy?"  
  
"But..."  
  
Luna continued in a sing-song voice. "When we were girls, Ginevra and I, we would play all sorts of games. Usually one of us was the Princess and the other one the Prince. Or sometimes we would get Ronald to play and he would be the Prince, but he didn't like to do that much. But then one of us would play the Princess--usually me, because I liked Ronald to be my Prince, you see. And then the other one would play the clever handmaid who knew all of the secrets and spells and killed the horrible King that was keeping the Princess locked in a dungeon with his pet dragon. And then the Prince would fight with the dragon and kill it--that was the part that Ronald liked--and then the handmaid would get them both dressed up fancy and they would get married, only Ronald would always say it was time for lunch before the wedding, even if we'd already had lunch."  
  
Luna leaned across and kissed Harry, and then continued. "Then, when Ron went off to school, the Prince got a name: Harry. She had met you, you see. And when we came to school ourselves, for the first few months she talked about you all of the time. But then she started to get... Well, you remember. Even _I_ thought she was acting strangely. And if I notice that someone's acting strangely, it must be pretty obvious. Only no one seemed to notice.  
  
"And then she disappeared down into the Chamber of Secrets. But you came to rescue her. And you defeated the dragon with the enchanted sword--yes, I know it was a Basilisk--and vanquished the Evil Sorcerer. And you rescued the Princess."  
  
Harry shivered. "I didn't know she'd told anyone what happened down there. I didn't think anyone but her parents, Dumbledore, Ron and Hermione knew."  
  
"She told me that next summer when she was sleeping at my house and woke up with a nightmare. She was in my bed screaming your name, telling Tom he couldn't have you." Luna's long fingers began another plait in Ginny's hair. "That's when I knew that I would be the handmaid, you see. Only, I couldn't really help because you and I hadn't exactly met yet and she started talking about wanting to fall in love with someone else, even though I knew it was just a matter of time. And so on the Hogwarts Express our fourth year I made sure to sit in the last empty compartment with Ginny and Neville, because I knew Ronald and... his lady friend would be up with the prefects, so you would probably join us."  
  
Harry found his fingers trembling, though he couldn't account for it. "You... set that up?"  
  
Luna nodded slowly. "For Ginny's sake, you see. Oh, I knew she was seeing Michael then, and Cho had talked about you all of the time the year before. But I knew you were the one she really cared for. And then when I got to know you... Harry, Ginny is the very kindest, bravest, most wonderful person I've ever known..."  
  
"Yes," Harry said, "she is."  
  
"But you are too. You are the only people who have ever _seen_ me, do you understand?" She gave what was, for Luna, a pained gasp. "Most people, when they look at me, I feel as if they're looking at some sort of illusion or glamour. They see Looney Lovegood, the daft Ravenclaw. I don't know why. Even Ronald, whom I... who knew me as a child. But Ginevra, and you... You see me, you look at the person behind the veil..."  
  
 _Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,_ Harry thought, and silently nodded.  
  
"Do you remember talking with me about your Godfather at the end of my and Ginevra's fourth year?"  
  
Again, Harry dipped his chin.  
  
"No one listened to me like that, Harry. Ever. Other than Ginevra. No one. I thought--for a brief time--about having you for myself, since Ginny had taken up with Dean."  
  
"I thought about it too," Harry answered. What had stopped him? Thoughts of Ron, and of Hermione. And of Ginny. And then...  
  
There, she blinked again, even as her fingers danced, ivory, through Ginny's bonfire of hair. "But then... you and Susan began to spend time together, and honestly, I was simply happy those two years, being with a group of _friends_ , honestly, it was something I'd never had. And I never thought I'd be close to someone the way I've become... close with you and with Ginevra." An unwonted edge of intensity had crept into Luna's usually ethereal voice. "And I love you both, and I know you love each other. And if you marry Ginny, I know that you will both be happy, and that will make me happy."  
  
Harry found both of his hands on her face, fingers on either side of those large, unearthly eyes, and the mingled pain and joy in those eyes made him want to scream, but he could feel Ginny turning on his lap, and so he took a deep breath before speaking.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Ginny felt as if she were wrapped in a cocoon, swathed and swaddled and bundled against the world. Fingers soothed, and voices caressed, and she snuggled between two sets of legs, feeling more protected, more loved, than she had in longer than she could remember.  
  
She slept, feeling their words blanketing her, and it was as if they were bathing her, sluicing her clean and light...  
  
She dreamt of playing with Luna at the Burrow when they were little, only instead of a grumbling Ron, Harry was there to play the Prince, and his green eyes made Ginny want to cry with joy.  
  
Mum.  
  
She was aware that something was different, and it pulled her towards conference... towards consciousness. The voices called her back up now, but she fought it, fought to stay in the deep safety of her cocoon, until she heard Harry say the most hurtful words she could have imagined.  
  
"I don't _want_ to marry Ginny!"  
  
That pulled her awake and set her body back into fight-or-flight mode within a heartbeat. Stunned, she listened, though her instinct prodded her to hex him and run away.  
  
"Why not?" Luna said, and her voice had a keening edge to it that made it scarcely recognizable.  
  
"Luna, haven't you been listening to me? When I look back now, it's been obvious to me that Ginny has been my future since before I'd even gone through puberty--I was just too stupid to recognize it." What? Ginny thought. Now it sounds as if the bastard is saying... "But _you_ 've been her friend for even longer. Remember, I've watched you together: Ginny _loves_ you, not as a friend, not as a helper or a servant or a maid. She _loves you_. And I told you, you silly, looney..." He gave an exasperated snort, and Ginny could feel his pulse racing through his veins. " _You_ believe it, don't you? You believe that you're somehow weird or cracked or lesser-than. You have no idea what a spectacular, magical, beautiful creature you are, and how in love with you Ginny and I are."  
  
Luna sniffled. She was crying. Luna _never_ cried.  
  
Harry barreled on. "Luna, understand me. I've been in a three-way relationship before, even if it wasn't sexual or... mostly... romantic. With me and Ron and Hermione, there were always four relationships to figure out: me and Ron, Ron and Hermione, Hermione and me, and then the three of us together. It's the same with us, only instead of only one of the relationships being romantic, it's all of them, and yeah, that's very complicated and hard, but it's amazing, too. If Ginny would have me, Luna, nothing in the world would make me happier, because I love her so much..."  
  
All of the cold rage that had been churning in Ginny moments before was replaced by a heat that threatened to choke her.  
  
"But, luv, I'm never going to ask her, because in order to do that, I'd have to turn my back on you, whom I also love. And for the very same reason, I'm pretty sure she would never accept...."  
  
Ginny felt Luna struggle to breathe, struggle to respond, so she opened her eyes, reached up to her face and croaked sleepily, "No, Luna-love, I wouldn't. I couldn't. You’ve saved my life this year every bit as much as Harry did first year." She felt a giggle bubbling up. "Besides, I don’t see what the problem is."  
  
Harry looked down at her, and he had his serious face on--the one that melted her insides. "Ginny, my love, I want to spend the rest of my life with the two of you..."  
  
"And?" she asked, fighting between the urge to giggle and to snog him senseless.  
  
Harry looked to Luna, who seemed to be contemplating the diffusion of mist droplets on his hair. "Ginny, I want... If... I... I want to marry you." There was a slightly panicked warble in his voice. " _And_ I want to marry Luna. And as nearly as I can tell, Luna would be just as happy to marry you as to marry me..."  
  
Against all of her restraint the giggle burst out, and both of them stared down at her, Luna solemnly, Harry more than a little annoyed. "Luna, you're aces at History of Magic. What is the basis of British Magical Law?"  
  
"Common law," replied her blonde friend, instanter.  
  
"When did our people break from obeying Royal or canon law?"  
  
Luna's large eyes narrowed slightly. "Before the Normans. At around the same time as the founding of Hogwarts."  
  
"And when was polygamy outlawed Britain?"  
  
Luna's mouth opened, then closed. Harry scowled at her, then back down at Ginny. "I don't know," Luna answered.  
  
"As nearly as I can tell, in 1274, during the reign of Edward IV. And that had something to do with 'marrying two virgins successively', which, I think we will agree, doesn't exactly pertain to our case in any event. The Ministry of Magic and its predecessors have never--so far as I or Professor Binns have been able to find--promulgated a law against multiple marriages."  
  
"Oh," said Luna.  
  
"You're... joking..." Harry said slowly. "But... Professor Binns?"  
  
Ginny laughed out loud. "Yes, Professor Binns. I told him I was conducting a research project, which I was, after a fashion, and I asked him for his help. I went during his office hours."  
  
Now Harry looked down at her with frank incredulity. "He has _office hours?_ "  
  
Ginny laughed again. "Yes. He said it was the first time any student had availed herself of his tutelage in fifty years."  
  
With that, all three of them burst into laughter, even Luna, and soon they were all three of them lying tangled and weeping on the grass, staring up into the branches of the beech.  
  
Finally catching his breath, Harry wheezed, "Well."  
  
"Yes, Mr. Potter?" sighed Ginny.  
  
"What are you girls doing this Saturday?"  
  
Ginny grabbed for Luna's hand; something about Harry's manner made her nervous. "Um, we're playing Hufflepuff. We'll obliterate them. Sloper's been as mad about training as Angelina ever was."  
  
"Will you come watch her Seek with me, Harry? She's a wonderful Seeker," Luna effused.  
  
"Yes, I will," Harry said, a grin splayed across his face. "Yes. She is." And then he proceeded to demonstrate his affection for each of them in ways that made Ginny very glad that the fog was wrapped around them like a grey cashmere muffler, averting any prying eyes....  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Professor McGonagall looked down towards the lake from her office, noting the mist that showed distinct evidence of having been bewitched around the old beech tree. Nibbling at a Ginger Newt, she tried very consciously to bethink herself of three students who had earned the right to surcease and happiness more than Mr. Potter or the Misses Lovegood and Weasley. Satisfied after some time that she could not, she turned from the window, wished the portrait of Albus Dumbledore over her desk a good night, and wandered up the stairs to where a good book, a cup of tea and wee dram of fifty-year-old scotch where waiting by her bedside.  
  
God bless, she thought, and climbed into bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I did a lot of research in writing this piece; I now know a lot more about polyamory (multiple marriage) in Europe—and specifically Britain—than I ever intended to know. What Ginny tells them is true: group marriages weren't outlawed in England until the thirteenth century. Even the Catholic church didn't ban polygamy (the marriage of one man to multiple women) until the eighth century; Judaism, Islam and Mormonism still formally allow polygamy, though none allow polyandry (the marriage of one woman to multiple men) and civil law in the West forbids bigamy (marrying more than once). The British Celts (whose culture was matrilinear--inheritance passed through the mother) practiced both polyandry and polygamy, those wild and crazy kids. My idea was that the British wizarding world split off from the Muggles before either canon or royal law made polyamory illegal. :shrugs:
> 
> About Sarah Fawcett: A Ravenclaw girl named Fawcett is found by Snape snogging a boy in the bushes during the Yule Ball in GoF. Voilà: my villainess.


	7. Bitten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna and Harry watch Ginny fly, Harry's got a question, and Luna's looking for signs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Angst. Polyamory. Fluff. Non-explicit sexual conversation.
> 
> Thanks to aberforths_rug for the beta.

As Harry approached Luna at the main doors to the castle, Luna noticed that he was even paler than usual--almost as pale as the reflection that met her gaze every morning in the mirror--but his eyes were bright. When he leaned in to kiss her cheek, she began peeking down the back of his collar.  
  
"Uh, Luna?" he muttered. "What are you looking for?"  
  
"Vampire Gnats," she whispered. "You look as if you might have been bitten."  
  
He pulled back and looked at her, then laughed. "No, Luna" he said, stepping back and taking her hand, leading her down the steps towards the Quidditch pitch, "no, the only things biting me of late have been you, Ginny, and my conscience."  
  
"Oh," Luna said, relieved, as they walked hand in hand down to the Quidditch stadium. "Harry?" she asked when they were about halfway there. He glanced at her, eyebrow raised. "Why do boys like anal sex so much?"  
  
He made a face that was really very much like a Saltmarsh Mudguppy, and Luna tried to remember to remind herself to find him a picture of one at the Quibbler offices; they looked so funny, even if they did have poisonous spines behind their gills. "I... Luna..."  
  
"Only Sarah Fawcett and Orla Quirke were going on and on the other night about how their boyfriends were always on them to try it--oh, did you know Sarah and Ethelred Bradley have broken up?--and I thought, Goodness, Harry and Ginny and I have never tried that, but maybe Harry is just too shy to ask, because you really are quite shy about these things sometimes, Harry, and so I wondered if you would like it, but then Orla was saying _all_ boys like it, especially poofters--they went to the meeting of the Sappho and Socrates Club yesterday, but I don't think it's helping yet--and I thought then that you must like it too. Not that you're homosexual, but you're male. Do you?"  
  
Harry stood there, blinking. Really, Luna had thought he had gotten past being so quiet. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, "Luna, I don't know. I can't say that I've ever tried it, or talked about it to anyone else that did. Perhaps we should talk about this when the three of us have a little privacy?"  
  
"Oh, good," Luna said, because really, she was curious--curious about anal sex, curious about boys. Particularly she was curious about Harry and the way that he could be so passionate one minute and so withdrawn another, and she knew that if she got him talking about something exciting to him that she would see more of the passionate side, which she always rather liked.  
  
When they reached the stadium, they walked around to the Ravenclaw section. A number of students greeted them--Felicity Goldstein gave Harry and Luna hugs, several members of the DA came over to shake his hand. As they settled into their seats, Luna felt a shadow as somebody stood behind them, and there they were, Orla and Sarah. "Oh, hello," Luna said, pleased that her dorm mates had appeared. "We were just talking about you two!"  
  
Sarah scowled, but Orla spoke first. "I bet." She glared at Luna but spoke to Harry. "So, I'm not surprised that you're too ashamed to show your face among the Gryffindors, Potter, but I don't know that you're particularly welcome here, either."  
  
"I'm sorry to hear that, Orla," Harry said, and Luna thought that Orla had been very foolish, because anyone who knew Harry knew that when he smiled like that he was at least as dangerous as a battalion of Heliopaths. "However, I do have a number of friends here in Ravenclaw." He held up Luna's hand, which he was holding much less loosely than before. "As I do in Hufflepuff and Slytherin. I didn't feel it would be fair for me to sit in either Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, since I don't want to take sides. Besides, I was looking forward to watching the match with Luna and her friends." With his other hand he gestured to Felicity and to Stewart Ackerly, Cynthia Tuljapurkar and some of the other younger Ravenclaws, all of whom were glaring at Orla and Sarah. Luna blinked at the crowd. Oh, my goodness, she thought. These _are_ my friends. The thought made her liver flutter.  
  
"I don't suppose it bothers you," sneered Sarah, "that you have to share your _girlfriends_ with each other."  
  
Luna felt Harry's grasp grow even tighter, and she would have let him get really angry with Sarah, since that was obviously what she had wanted--it had always been the kind of thing that Sarah wanted--but Luna had to ask something first. "Well," she began, "Harry wouldn't really know about that, since the three of us love each other--there's no sharing involved. But you've had quite a _bit_ of experience with sharing, haven't you? How does that feel? After all, Ethelred's dating Natalie McDonald now, and Stewart's going with Dorcas Chambers, and Alphonso is going with..."  
  
Spluttering and white-faced, Sarah stomped off, dragging Orla behind her.  
  
"But I wanted to know!" Luna called, and the stands around her erupted in laughter. Turning to Harry, she murmured, "I did want to know, you know."  
  
Harry grinned and kissed her. "I do, love."  
  
At that moment, the Hufflepuff team zoomed out into the air above the pitch, yellow robes snapping behind them. John Summerby, the captain and Seeker--Ginny's opposite--raised a fist as he passed in front of the Hufflepuff section, triggering a tumultuous cheer.  
  
The Ravenclaws cheered too, but quietly. They were tied for the lead in the House Cup with Hufflepuff and if the Gryffindors managed to defeat the Badgers even more decisively than they had the Eagles, then Ravenclaw would gain a decisive advantage going into the final month of school. Luna was happy either way--it had been over a decade since a house other than Gryffindor or Slytherin had won the House Cup. She was cheering on Gryffindor for a different reason.  
  
And with a whoosh of scarlet and gold, there she came. Jack Sloper was the captain of the Lions, but Ginny was the acknowledged leader, and as she zoomed in front of the Gryffindor stands, they rowdily took up their fight song.  
  
_Weasley is our queen!  
  
Weasley is our queen!  
  
Weasley cannot miss a bean  
  
She'll drive the other Seeker green  
  
That's what Gryffindors all mean:  
  
Weasley is our queen!  
  
_Through five verses, Luna happily sang along. As the song ended, Ginny did a barrel roll in front of the Ravenclaw stands and blew them a kiss.  
  
"Show-off," Harry muttered, but he was smiling.  
  
Then Madam Hooch called both teams in and the match began.  
  
Luna really didn't like Quidditch all that much, but she loved to watch Ginny fly. Zigging and zagging around Summerby, she kept the other Seeker dizzy, all the while scanning for the Snitch. For over an hour, Luna and Harry followed her quick--and very attractive--figure, barely noticing that the Ravenclaw stands were getting more and more raucous as the Gryffindor team pulled ahead by more than the fifteen goals that would guarantee their victory.  
  
"I love the way her legs curl under her broom when she's going into a dive," Luna murmured in Harry's ear. "I like to think of them pulling you close to her like that."  
  
Harry coughed for the next five minutes.  
  
Not long after he regained the ability to breathe normally, Ginny grabbed the Snitch after a spectacular hundred-foot climb straight up--she closed her fingers around the golden ball just as her broom stalled out.  
  
Luna cheered with Harry, but she clutched onto his arm until Ginny's broom leveled off and she zoomed on a victory lap, clutching the Snitch. When she flew in front of the Ravenclaw section, Luna could see that her smile was wide and Ginny-like, the smile that they had seen so little of over the last few years.  
  
  
  
When Ginny had finally extricated herself from the scrum of her cheering teammates, showered and changed, she all but leapt onto Luna and Harry, and Luna was reminded of just how small Ginny in fact was. It was so easy to forget because she seemed so present, so formidable. Harry had used the word once to describe her during one of her more spectacular rages, but Luna thought it suited her redheaded lover even in her quieter moments. Formidable. Ginny kissed each of them in turn, and the scent of shampoo, adrenaline and joy wafted off of her like perfume.  
  
"Hello, Ginevra," Luna said, as always pleased to be seen, pleased to be kissed.  
  
"Hello, you beautiful loony, you!" Ginny howled, and kissed them both again, long and breathlessly.  
  
A group of third and fourth years--mixed houses, all DA members, and Luna's throat swelled to realize how much had changed in just a few years--stared shyly at them, their mouths open. Harry waved to the group awkwardly. Several sheepishly waved back. Two of the boys looked deeply impressed, and Luna wondered if it was due to Ginny's Quidditch skills. Boys seemed to like Quidditch even more than they were supposed to like anal sex. Luna found this rather odd.  
  
"Oh Merlin," Ginny giggled. "It was bad enough that I snogged Luna's ears off in the Great Hall. Now that I've kissed you both they won't know what to think of me."  
  
"That you're rather good at Quidditch, I should think," Luna mused. Harry laughed and agreed, waving to the younger students again and pulling the two girls away from the stadium.  
  
They wandered off to one of the more secluded spots by the lake--Luna remembered that it was the place where the second task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament had been held four years previously. "Oh, Harry," she said. "Gabrielle Delacour says hello."  
  
Conjuring a blanket for them to lie on, Ginny muttered, "Sod Gabrielle." She peered up at Harry, who was Expanding a picnic hamper that he'd been carrying around in his pocket. He arched an eyebrow at her. "She can't have you!" Ginny said fiercely, and there she is: formidable. "We had you first. And we're keeping you."  
  
Harry placed the hamper beside him, knelt down and took Ginny's hand. His eyes were glittering like the chitin of some lovely green beetle. "She can't have me. I don't want some second year girl, even if she is part Veela." He reached up and pulls Luna down beside them. "I want the two of you." His grip was warm but as hard as Adamantine.  
  
It was peculiar that Luna found Ginny's native fierceness exciting, while Harry's frightened her. Some day she would have to work out why that was. "Oh, Ginny," she burbled instead, "Harry wants to talk to us about anal sex."  
  
Ginny's eyes screwed up in amused shock. "Is that so, Harry?"  
  
He looked like a Mudguppy again. "I... Luna was talking to _me_... That's _not_ what I wanted to talk with the two of you about just now."  
  
"Oh, Harry?" Luna should have known that he had wanted to talk to them about something; it was the second most likely reason for the Vampire Gnat symptoms that he had been showing earlier. "Is it about Quidditch?"  
  
"What?" Harry shook his head and Ginny snorted. He was looking very quiet now indeed, and pale and bright-eyed, and Luna wasn’t sure that she should have taken his word that he hadn’t been bitten. Just now she wanted to take his shirt off and examine him very, very closely...  
  
Ginny smirked at them. “You two are acting positively nutty.” She gave Luna’s hand a squeeze. “I’m used to that in Luna, here, but what’s gotten into you, Harry?”  
  
He let go of their two hands--breaking the circle--and stood up, pacing away from them and turning back just as he seemed about ready to go for a nice swim. It was still a little early in the year for swimming up here in the Highlands, but that was what it looked like, and with Harry, one never knew. “I spoke with… with…” He blinked at them both, searching for a word. “With the Minister this morning.”  
  
Suddenly it was Ginny who was acting nervous; she clutched at Luna’s hand and her arm. Oh, silly Ginny. She always anticipated the worst—some rejection. Really, Luna would have to kiss her later. “You s-spoke with D-dad?”  
  
Harry nodded solemnly. “Your dad. Luna’s godfather,” he gulped.  
  
“Wh-what about?” Ginny’s hand was shaking against Luna’s forearm. Truly, Ginny was hardly one to talk about acting oddly.  
  
Luna asked, “Was it to do with the sighting of Antonin Dolohov in Brighton?”  
  
Harry shook his head again, very emphatically, then squinted at Luna. “No, it wasn’t, but how did you hear about that?”  
  
“The staff at _The Quibbler_.”  
  
“Oh.” Harry pushed his glasses back, then stared back out toward the lake. Was he thinking of jumping in for a swim again? “It was about you two. About the three of us.”  
  
“ _What!_ ” Ginny yelled, shocking Luna. Harry didn’t seem to be shocked by her reaction at all. “You talked to my dad about?... You talked with my dad about our... about _my_ thoroughly bizarre love life?”  
  
“I... I’m sorry, Ginny, I had to ask...”  
  
“Bloody hell, Harry!” Ginny shrieked, her nails piercing Luna’s jumper.  
  
“I, but...” Harry spluttered, his hands held out.  
  
Luna patted her girlfriend’s hand. “Ginny, do you really think your love life is bizarre?” Ginny stared at her, mouth open.  
  
While she was silent, Harry plowed forward. “I asked him for permission to ask the two of you to, um, enter into a, um…”  
  
Ginny’s mouth clicked shut.  
  
This was altogether unforeseen. “Harry,” Luna said, “did you ask Mr. Weasley’s permission to marry us both?”  
  
Harry nodded. Ginny turned a shade of green just a little less sickly than bubotuber puss.  
  
Luna considered this turn of events. “Well,” she said, “that must have surprised him.”  
  
“Actually,” Harry said with a shaky grin, “I don’t think it did.”  
  
Ginny let out a small, wounded sound. “Bloody hell.” She hid her face in her hands.  
  
Luna kissed the top of her head. “What’s wrong, Ginevra?”  
  
Putting her hands up, trying to keep both of them back, Ginny looked up at them, lost and wet-eyed. The reckless joy of just minutes before was gone. “Everyone thinks I’m a freak. Now the only one who still thought of me as n-normal little g-g-girl thinks I’m a _freak_ too!”  
  
Harry took one of her hands and Luna took the other. “It wasn’t like that at all,” Harry said. “He’d already guessed; he said he knew when we visited at Easter, that he’d firecalled Professor McGonagall and she’d confirmed it for him. What he asked me, Ginny, love, wasn’t whether we were crazy, or couldn’t we make up our minds or what the bloody hell did I think I was doing to his wonderful daughter and goddaughter. I’d expected that. No, what he asked me was what my first thought was when I woke up this morning. And I said that it was of the two of you—knowing that I’d see you this afternoon. I didn’t tell him my last thought yesterday night was of the two of you kissing under the old beech by the castle.” Ginny went from pale to pink in a heartbeat. What a talent. With a small, wan smile, Harry continued, “And then he asked me if I’d ever considered marrying just one of you. And I told him what we talked about the other night: that none of us could possibly marry one of the others, knowing that the third would be left out.”  
  
Luna began to remind him that she would be very happy to see Harry and Ginevra marry, but Harry silenced her with that intense stare of his.  
  
“Luna, don’t even start that again,” Ginny muttered. She looked utterly flummoxed, uncertain whether to be happy or sad or embarrassed or giddy, and Luna wanted to tell her to do them all at once.  
  
“Do you want to know what he did?” Harry asked. Luna nodded; Ginny shrugged. “He asked me how much I knew about the Plinths.”  
  
“What?” Ginny sniffled. “Sextus and Octavia and that lot?”  
  
Harry nodded. “Turns out the Plinths have had a group marriage going up in Lancashire for a hundred and eighty years. Anywhere from eight to twelve adults; the current lot range from thirty to a hundred and twenty-five in age. That’s why they name their kids that way—too many to come up with new names all of the time.” Even Luna was surprised by that. Ginny stared at him solemnly. “He quoted that same statute of Henry IV that you found, Gin, told me that the wizarding world had never outlawed polygamy or polyandry. According to your dad, there’re forty-nine PDUs—Polyamorous Domestic Units—in wizarding Britain right now. About half are families from Asia. The Patils have two dads. Most involve a man and two women. A number involve a witch and two or more wizards. One is four witches on the Isle of Man. It’s unusual, but we wouldn’t be alone.”  
  
Ginny sniffled again.  
  
“Ginny, your dad knew. He... He said that he approved. That as long as you two agreed, that he’d never seen three people so happy together.”  
  
Luna was aware that she was sniffling too. Really, what was that?  
  
Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a wand case. But his old one was still perfectly good. He’d just used it to grow their picnic basket. Why would he?... Hands trembling, he opened the velvet box. Inside were three gold rings, each with a trio of stones arranged in a triangle: an opal, set in a raven’s claw, and a topaz and an emerald, each set in the mouth of a roaring lion. Pulling two of the rings out, he stammered, “It can’t be at St. Catchpole’s, I’m afraid. I really wanted that, Ginny, because I knew...”  
  
Ginny squeaked and held her hand in front of her mouth, which Luna knew from eighteen years of friendship and love meant that she was overcome with joy. Harry, she realized, wouldn’t know that, and didn’t.  
  
“I... I... I’m sorry, Ginny. I... Your dad said that he would like to officiate. At the Burrow. Ginny?”  
  
Luna decided that perhaps it would be best if she intervened. “She’s happy, Harry. I don’t think you need to make it better.”  
  
“Oh,” he said.  
  
Ginny wiped her eyes savagely on her sleeve and stuck her chin out as Luna had watched her do since they were children. “Yeah, fine,” she finally said. “I’m happy. But what the hell am I happy about? Isn’t there something you’re supposed to _ask_ us, Harry Potter?”  
  
Again, the Mudguppy look, and Luna couldn’t help it: she laughed.  
  
Harry stared at the two of them. “I... The...” He held up the two rings in trembling hands and took a deep breath. “Ginny, Luna, will you... both... consent to, erm, consent to...” He screwed his mouth into a miserable knot. “Can we all get married?”  
  
“Yes, Harry,” Ginny said, before he’d even gotten the last syllable out, and put her hand around the closest ring.  
  
Luna reached out and touched the other gold band. “People lose people when they get married.”`  
  
“Yes, Luna, sometimes they do,” Harry said.  
  
“And sometimes they lose themselves in the marriage.”  
  
Ginny’s hand touched her face, thumbed away a tear. “That’s true, too, Luna. But I trust you not to let me disappear. And we won’t let you. We promise.” Harry blinked in agreement.  
  
Luna threaded her finger into the ring and grasped Harry’s hand, then reached up and took Ginny’s. “Then I think I’ll say yes, too.” She took a deep breath, then reached down with her and Ginny’s hand and plucked the third ring out. Together they offered it to Harry. He accepted it silently. Goodness.  
  
They sat there in silence, each staring down into their own ring.  
  
“Have you ever thought,” Luna asked after a long pause, “what would have happened if Susan and Dean and Ronald and Neville and the rest had survived? I wouldn’t be getting engaged, I don’t think. Would you?”  
  
Ghosts flowed over the picnic blanket for a moment, and Luna deeply regretted conjuring them up. But Ginny shook her head and said, “No, no, I wouldn’t either, I’m certain.”  
  
Harry smiled a bit sadly. “I don’t think so. I _certainly_ wouldn’t be considering entering a Polyamorous Domestic Unit.”  
  
“Only the Ministry!” smirked Ginny. “Only the Ministry could take what we have and hang such a horrid name on it!”  
  
That made Luna giggle. “Well, this has been an even more exciting conversation than anal sex. What have you got in the hamper, Harry? Something yummy, I hope? Is either one of you hungry?”  
  
They both nodded. And laughed. And the three of them ate and talked and laughed through the rest of the afternoon, and Luna even checked them both very thoroughly for Vampire Gnat bites. They didn’t seem to have suffered any. But it was always good to check.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is the conclusion of the series. Yay! I do have an epilogue that should be up soon (or sooner). I hope the ending isn't too fluffy--after putting this trio through all of this angst, I just had to let them wallow in the fluff a bit.
> 
> The Plinths? Based on the structure of lunar marriages in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Great fun.
> 
> I have no idea whether a threesome like this could actually work; as most of us know, it's hard enough to make a two-person relationship fly. I know that there are working multiple marriages out there, and it made sense for these three, so I went for it.


	8. Epilogue: Only the Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and family have some unexpected guests. (About fifteen years after "Bitten.")

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for beta help for this whole series to aberforths_rug!

The sitting room looked as if a small-scale war had been fought there, and Harry couldn't help but grin, thinking of what Aunt Petunia would think if she could see it. "All right, you lot, time to clean up before your cousins get here."  
  
"DAD!" howled four voices in unison. The twins were clearly deep in the midst of playing out some sort of crossover scene from one of their favorite Lemony Snicket books and Scooby Doo, and seemed to have no interest in stopping, while little Lily wanted to join in, and the eldest, raven-haired Sirene, simply looked annoyed that she was being asked to help when all she wanted to do was continue to lie upside down on the settee and read the latest Tamora Pierce.  
  
"A piece of Grandma Molly's fudge for those that help," Harry called, and suddenly the room was a blur of activity. That recipe had more magic in it than any potion Harry had ever learned from Snape.  
  
“Wish it wasn’t Dobby’s night off,” Lily sighed as she slaved away.  
  
“Dobby’s got enough to be getting on with without having to clean up this disaster,” Harry said. In truth, Dobby would have had to have been physically restrained before he would have allowed the children to pick up the room. But it was the principal of the matter that counted, and the kids understood that.  
  
"Wish we could just do it by magic," Sirene drawled. "It's no fair we can't even try till we get to Hogwarts."  
  
"You'll be there soon enough, Silky," Harry sighed. Too soon, truth be told.  
  
"You could do it for us, Dad," whinged Charlotte, picking up puzzle pieces while managing to keep her brother in a headlock. "Two flicks of a wand, and _poof_."  
  
"Let Jim go, Lottie." When she did, looking almost shocked to find that she had been holding him at all, he continued, "And _I_ don’t need to clean the place up. You done the messing, you do the cleaning."  
  
"Magic can't solve all our problems," they all droned together.  
  
"Too right," Harry said, giving them a mock-Vernon scowl, which made them laugh as it almost always did.  
  
Quickly enough the room was back to a state that, while it might not have met Aunt Petunia's specifications, passed muster with Harry. When he had finished his tour of inspection, Harry hustled his troops down the stairs to the draughty old kitchen.  
  
This was the one room that they had barely changed, Harry realized as he listened to the satisfied near-silence of the children devouring their most beloved grandmother's most beloved sweets. Same long, battered table, same huge, smoke-blackened range. He ran his hands along the granite countertop and spotted the nick where Sirius had smashed a butterbeer bottle once upon a time.  
  
"Your cousins will be coming over for dinner," Harry said.  
  
"The Dursleys?" Jim blurted excitedly. Harry smirked and nodded. It still astonished him that his children got on with Dudley's so well.  
  
“Yup. So go get cleaned up and set the table. They’ll be here soon.”  
  
Lily scowled, and Harry had the ridiculous image of her cheek-loads of freckles pouring onto the floor. “Mum and Auntie Luna are going to be late, aren’t they?”  
  
“Mummy’s always late,” Jim muttered, his blue eyes darkening.  
  
Harry couldn’t help but sigh: Ginny and Luna were busy, and yes, they were often late. He’d told them both they needn’t work, but they had each looked at him as if he were sporting Quirrell’s turban, and Voldemort’s face had started talking out of the back of his head. Luna had transformed _The Quibbler_ into something like a credible news weekly, even if features on wizards abducted by Yetis and on Heliopath armies gathering on the far side of the moon occasionally pushed the Ministry’s doings off the cover. And Ginny... “They’ll be back as soon as they can. Sheila and Shirley’s parents want to talk to us. Grown-up stuff.”  
  
Sirene pulled a disgusted face. “That sounds horrible. Will we have to stay?”  
  
“No, you can go back upstairs. Wouldn’t want to subject you to _that_.” Even Silky smiled at that. “Now off you lot get. Clean up, set the table. The quicker you’re done, the more time you get to spend with Sheila and Shirley. Ready, steady...”  
  
He didn’t even need to say _go_. They were gone.  
  
  
  
  
As it turned out, Ginny arrived at the same time as the Dursleys. “Look who I found on our doorstep!” she said, swaying in the rough embrace of Dudley’s redheaded daughters.  
  
“Sheila, Shirley! Mind your manners,” snapped their mother. Diminutive and plump, Deirdre Dursley always reminded Harry of Molly Weasley, and he loved her for that almost as much as he did the fact that she had her poor husband totally cowed. “You’ll break poor Doctor Potter’s legs!”  
  
“Healer,” Ginny said, giving each of the Dursley girls a quick kiss on the top of the head. “In our circles, it would be _Healer_ Potter.”  
  
Harry’s children surrounded their cousins and the whole giggling mass stumbled up the stairs towards the sitting room.  
  
“We’ll be eating in just a minute!” Harry called up.  
  
“Hullo, Harry,” Dudley mumbled. It was amazing that Deirdre, Sheila and Shirley could make Harry’s mammoth cousin entirely disappear. Must be magic, he thought with a smile.  
  
“Hey, Dudders,” Harry said, extending a hand. As always, it was like shaking hands with a rump roast. Ginny kissed him on the cheek, a much more pleasant greeting. “Hello, sweetheart,” Harry said.  
  
Dudley looked supremely uncomfortable, and Harry almost hated himself for reveling in it.  
  
“So,” Ginny said brightly, as Harry took Dudley and Deirdre’s coats, “it’s wonderful to see you all again. To what do we owe the pleasure?”  
  
If anything, Dudley looked even more uncomfortable, even more invisible despite his girth. “Erm...”  
  
His wife favored him with an extremely unimpressed glare, tisked, and then said, “Our Shirley got herself a letter from that school of yours.”  
  
“Oh!” Ginny exclaimed, “that’s wonderful!”  
  
“I recognized the envelope,” said Dudley, trying to redeem himself.  
  
Harry grinned, thinking that Dudley had probably seen more of those envelopes than anyone who didn’t work for the Owl Post. “Congratulations,” he said as he handed the coats to the enchanted buckhorn coat rack.  
  
“Yes, well,” Dudley muttered, looking very much like Uncle Vernon on a bad day.  
  
“We’ll talk about it after dinner,” Deirdre snapped, and Dudley closed his mouth tight.  
  
Ginny moved the conversation as if Dudley hadn’t just been metaphorically backhanded by his wife. “How are your parents, Dudley?”  
  
The big man gave a shy smirk and shrugged. “Same. Dad’s on and on about how Grunnings used to be run in the good old days, before that big multinational, PWL, bought the firm.” Ginny nodded, but her eye glimmered with humor and Harry had to work not to smile. Potter, Weasley & Lovegood, Ltd was the holding company for the family’s Muggle investments. Dudley continued. “Mum’s still cleaning like a fiend, minding everybody else’s business. Did you know she kept that moving photo you sent her of your mum?” Harry shook his head. He hadn’t had any direct contact with his aunt and uncle in fifteen years; wouldn’t have had any with Dudley if Deirdre hadn’t pushed him come and apologize. “Yeah, she keeps it in one of her drawers. Peeks at it when she thinks no one’s looking.”  
  
Aunt Petunia was still a puzzle, it seemed. “What do they think about Shirley?”  
  
Dudley shrugged, and Deirdre said, her eyebrow arched, “We haven’t told them yet. Thought we’d talk to you first, didn’t we?”  
  
“Makes sense,” Harry said with a nod. “Look, dinner’s ready. Let me serve out, I’ll have some wine in the dining room in a tick. Gin, could you go up and tell the children that food’s on?”  
  
Through dinner, Harry watched the Dursleys—especially their eldest daughter—with fascination. He had surmised that she was a witch years ago—she had the amazing knack of never quite breaking whatever delicate thing she was constantly bumping into. And her younger sister was clearly magical: Sirene had seen her make a wooden stool catch fire when she lost at musical chairs once. Poor Dudley. What _would_ his parents think? Then again, neither Dudley, Aunt Petunia, nor Uncle Vernon mattered a whit when it came to Shirley and Sheila. The question was, what did Deirdre Dursley think?  
  
As Harry was just about to serve the pudding—Harry snickered when he saw Dudley snatch back his hand at a mere glance from his wife, rather than take a serving of the cherry tart—Luna floated into the dining room, hair flowing behind her, wand behind her ear, hands and nose besmirched with purple ink. “Hello, Harry,” she said, leaning down to kiss him. “Hello, Ginevra,” she murmured, leaning across to favor Ginny with a buss that was, if anything, longer and warmer.  
  
Deirdre’s mouth looked as unerringly linear as Professor McGonagall’s. Dudley’s chin nearly hit the table. The children scarcely blinked, though they all—Dudley’s included—greeted Luna warmly. “Hullo, Mum!” yelled Jim and Lottie.  
  
Luna meandered down the table, distributing kisses to all and sundry.  
  
“Just in time for a sweet, sweet,” Harry said.  
  
“Oh, good,” Luna said as she took her seat. “we’ve been trying to wrap up the series on Screwt-smuggling, and it’s very bitter work. I could use something sweet.” And she plunged into the tart with gusto.  
  
  
  
When the children had been dispatched to the second floor, Harry, Luna and Ginny spent nearly two hours answering Deirdre’s questions about Hogwarts, about the magical community. She was seated below the portrait of Dumbledore, and Harry watched with pleasure as the old headmaster chuckled and grinned at her very practical, very mundane questions.  
  
Dudley scarcely opened his mouth.  
  
By the time the conversation wound down, Harry was certain that Deirdre had decided that no one—not even that walking tumor, Vernon Dursley—was going to keep her daughter from receiving the benefit of the finest magical education available. He knew the die was cast when she began to ask Ginny and Luna about magical fashion. The three women wandered upstairs to look at some of Madam Malkin’s latest.  
  
Harry sat contentedly sipping the hundred-year-old firewhiskey that he had brought up from the cellars for himself, Dudley and Ginny. The irony of it—that Petunia’s grandchild would be attending Hogwarts—warmed him almost as much as the whiskey. “So, Dudley,” he said. “You should be proud.”  
  
Dudley grunted, as non-verbal as he had been all evening. And yet his eyes glimmered with a kind of porcine intelligence. Harry knew something vile was coming, and he wasn’t disappointed. “Keep you busy, those two, I bet. Couple of beauties. Must be bloody great in the sack.”  
  
Harry was amazed that the comment did nothing whatsoever to offset his sense of well-being. He looked up at his cousin and considered all of the ways that he might answer that bit of sleeze. He decided to take the high road. “And you, Dudders, are a very lucky man yourself.” True enough, Harry thought, since no other woman would put up with you.  
  
In spite of himself, however, Harry gave a grin that let Dudley know that, indeed, he was missing more than he could possibly imagine. And that bed was only the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Under my [K.D. West](https://stillpointeros.com/kdwest?utm_source=A03-LOCKED) persona, I adapted parts of this cycle as an original steamy/angsty fantasy novella, Changelings, which appears in the anthology [Into the Mystic: Stories of Magic and Romance](https://stillpointdigital.com/book/into-the-mystic/?utm_source=A03-LOCKED), edited by [deadwoodpecker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadptarmigan). (It's set in the same story universe as my novel [By the Numbers](https://stillpointeros.com/product/by-the-numbers/?utm_source=A03-LOCKED).)


End file.
